Related papers: Why so many sperm cells?
Infertility is a global health problem, and an increasing number of couples are seeking medical assistance to achieve reproduction, at least half of which are caused by men. The success rate of assisted reproductive technologies depends on…
Evolutionary game theory is an abstract and simple, but very powerful way to model evolutionary dynamics. Even complex biological phenomena can sometimes be abstracted to simple two-player games. But often, the interaction between several…
The Great Filter hypothesis is an extension of the Fermi Paradox: "If life is so common in the universe, why don't we see it?" The Great Filter theory posits there are multiple obstacles or filters life must pass through which ultimately…
A novel mechanism for sympatric speciation that takes into account complex bio-processes within each individual organism is proposed. According to dynamical systems theory, organisms with identical genotypes can possess differentiated…
Most experimental studies initialize the population of evolutionary algorithms with random genotypes. In practice, however, optimizers are typically seeded with good candidate solutions either previously known or created according to some…
One of the most challenging issues of evolutionary biology concerns speciation, the emergence of new species from an initial one. The huge amount of species found in nature demands a simple and robust mechanism. Yet, no consensus has been…
During each ovarian cycle, only a definite number of follicles ovulate, while the others undergo a degeneration process called atresia. We have designed a multi-scale mathematical model where ovulation and atresia result from a hormonal…
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…
In human societies the probability of strategy adoption from a given person may be affected by the personal features. Now we investigate how an artificially imposed restricted ability to reproduce, overruling ones fitness, affects an…
Eukaryote genomes contain excessively introns, inter-genic and other non-genic sequences that appear to have no vital functional role or phenotype manifestation. Their existence, a long-standing puzzle, is viewed from the principle of…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
The provision of intergenerational care, via the Grandmother Hypothesis, has been implicated in the evolution of post-fertile longevity, particularly in humans. However, if grandmothering does provide fitness benefits, a key question is why…
The puzzle associated with the cost of sex, an old problem of evolutionary biology, is discussed here from the point of view of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The results suggest, in a simplified model, that the prevalence of sexual…
Plant domestication involved a process of selection through human agency of a series of traits collectively termed the domestication syndrome. Current debate concerns the pace at which domesticated plants emerged from cultivated wild…
Why do some females menstruate at all? Answering this question has implications for understanding the tight links between reproductive function and organismal immunity. Here we build on the growing evidence that menstruation is the…
Unlike other organs, the thymus and gonads generate non-uniform cell populations, many members of which perish, and a few survive. While it is recognized that thymic cells are 'audited' to optimize an organism's immune repertoire, whether…
A question in evolutionary biology is why the number of males is approximately equal to that of females in many species, and Fisher's theory of equal investment answers that it is the evolutionarily stable state. The Fisherian mechanism can…
Several recent studies show that companion cells in flowering plant gametophytes relax epigenetic control of transposable elements (TEs) to promote production of small RNA that presumably assist nearby reproductive cells in management of…
Many self-propelled microorganisms are attracted to surfaces. This makes their dynamics in restricted geometries very different from that observed in the bulk. Swimming along walls is beneficial for directing and sorting cells, but may be…
Cell formation problem is among the first obstacles the designer of cellular production systems must overcome. This paper presents a critical analysis of the various criteria and constraints considered in the literature. The objective is to…