Related papers: Why so many sperm cells?
Spermatogenesis is sustained by the proliferation and differentiation of spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs). SSCs are derived from primordial germ cells (PGCs) during embryonic development. The signal from the mammalian embryonic tissue is…
Active swimmers are ubiquitous in nature, found in many diverse biological systems ranging from bacteria to vertebrate fish. Of particular importance are sperm cells which are swimmers that are crucial for the survival of many species…
Through extensive studies of dynamical system modeling cellular growth and reproduction, we find evidence that complexity arises in multicellular organisms naturally through evolution. Without any elaborate control mechanism, these systems…
The evolution of multicellularity was a major transition in the history of life on earth. Conditions under which multicellularity is favored have been studied theoretically and experimentally. But since the construction of a multicellular…
Compartments are ubiquitous throughout biology, yet their importance stretches back to the origin of cells. In the context of origin of life, we assume that a protocell, a compartment enclosing functional components, requires $N$ components…
Sex is considered as an evolutionary paradox, since its evolutionary advantage does not necessarily overcome the two fold cost of sharing half of one's offspring's genome with another member of the population. Here we demonstrate that…
Maintaining genetic diversity as a means to avoid premature convergence is critical in Genetic Programming. Several approaches have been proposed to achieve this, with some focusing on the mating phase from coupling dissimilar solutions to…
Sertoli cell is the"nurse"in testes that regulates germ cell proliferation and differentiation. One Sertoli cell supports a certain number of germ cells during these processes. Thus, it is the determinant of male reproductive capability.…
This paper studies the mutation-selection balance in three simplified replication models. The first model considers a population of organisms replicating via the production of asexual spores. The second model considers a sexually…
Foraging is a central decision-making behavior performed by all animals, essential to garnishing enough energy for an organism to survive. Similarly, mating is crucial for evolutionary continuity and offspring production. Mate choice is one…
Consider a branching process with a homogeneous reproduction law. Sampling a single cell uniformly from the population at a time $T > 0$ and looking along the sampled cell's ancestral lineage, we find that the reproduction law is…
We investigate a stochastic search process in one dimension under the competing roles of mortality, redundancy, and diversity of the searchers. This picture represents a toy model for the fertilization of an oocyte by sperm. A population of…
An adult human body is made up of some 30 to 40 trillion cells, all of which stem from a single fertilized egg cell. The process by which the right cells appear to arrive in their right numbers at the right time at the right place --…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
This paper develops mathematical models describing the evolutionary dynamics of both asexually and sexually reproducing populations of diploid unicellular organisms. We consider two forms of genome organization. In one case, we assume that…
We introduce an interacting particle system which models the inherited sterility method. Individuals evolve on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ according to a contact process with parameter $\lambda>0$. With probability $p \in [0,1]$ an offspring is fertile…
When a population inhabits an inhomogeneous environment, the fitness value of traits can vary with the position in the environment. Gene flow caused by random mating can nevertheless prevent that a sexually reproducing population splits…
We find that the hypothesis made by Jan, Stauffer and Moseley [Theory in Biosc., 119, 166 (2000)] for the evolution of sex, namely a strategy devised to escape extinction due to too many deleterious mutations, is sufficient but not…
Cell differentiation is an important process in living organisms. Differentiation is mostly based on binary decisions with the progenitor cells choosing between two specific lineages. The differentiation dynamics have both deterministic and…
Background: Speciation corresponds to the progressive establishment of reproductive barriers between groups of individuals derived from an ancestral stock. Since Darwin did not believe that reproductive barriers could be selected for, he…