Related papers: Why so many sperm cells?
Sexual selection is a fundamental aspect of evolution for all eukaryotic organisms with mating types. This paper suggests intersexual selection is best viewed as a mechanism to compensate for the unavoidable dynamics of coevolution between…
The rise of multicellularity in the early evolution of life represents a major challenge for evolutionary biology. Guidance for finding answers has emerged from disparate fields, from phylogenetics to modelling and synthetic biology, but…
Sex in higher diploids carries a two-fold cost of males that should reduce its fitness relative to cloning and result in its extinction. Instead, sex is widespread and it is clonal species that face early obsolescence. One possible reason…
We propose a class of evolutionary models that involves an arbitrary exchangeable process as the breeding process and different selection schemes. In those models, a new genome is born according to the breeding process, and then a genome is…
The majority of stars more massive than the Sun is found in binary or multiple star systems and many of them will interact during their evolution. Specific interactions, where progenitors and post-mass transfer (MT) systems are clearly…
We consider the dynamics imposed by natural selection on the populations of two competing, sexually reproducing, haploid species. In this setting, the fitness of any genome varies over time due to the changing population mix of the…
A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…
Cellular micromotors are attractive for locally delivering high concentrations of drug and targeting hard-to-reach disease sites such as cervical cancer and early ovarian cancer lesions by non-invasive means. Spermatozoa are highly…
Stem cells, through their ability to produce daughter stem cells and differentiate into specialized cells, are essential in the growth, maintenance, and repair of biological tissues. Understanding the dynamics of cell populations in the…
In this work of speculative science, scientists from a distant star system explain the emergence and consequences of triparentalism, when three individuals are required for sexual reproduction, which is the standard form of mating on their…
Dynamics maintaining diversity of cell types in a multi-cellular system are studied in relationship with the plasticity of cellular states. First, we introduce a new theoretical framework, reaction-diffusion system on `chemical species…
Insect production for food and feed presents a promising supplement to ensure food safety and address the adverse impacts of agriculture on climate and environment in the future. However, optimisation is required for insect production to…
It is not currently possible to create a living organism ab initio due to the overwhelming complexity of biological systems. In fact, the origin of life mechanism, this being how biological organisms form from non-living matter, is unknown.…
Development from egg to embryo to adult is a fascinating instance of biological self-organization for which genetics has supplied us with a parts list. It remains to find the principles organizing the assembly of those parts. In the last…
Emergence is a phenomenon taken for granted in science but also still not well understood. We have developed a model of artificial genetic evolution intended to allow for emergence on genetic, population and social levels. We present the…
Sperm are propelled by bending waves travelling along the flagellum. During steering in gradients of sensory cues, sperm adjust the flagellar beat waveform. Symmetric and asymmetric beat waveforms produce straight and curved swimming paths,…
Genetic diversity is central to the process of evolution. Both natural selection and random genetic drift are influenced by the level of genetic diversity of a population; selection acts on diversity while drift samples from it. At a given…
Diversity is an important factor in evolutionary algorithms to prevent premature convergence towards a single local optimum. In order to maintain diversity throughout the process of evolution, various means exist in literature. We analyze…
In vertebrates, olfactory sensory neurons choose only one olfactory receptor to produce out of ~2000 possibilities. The mechanism for how this singular receptor expression occurs is unknown. Here we propose a mechanism that can…
Most stars - especially young stars - are observed to be in multiple systems. Dynamical evolution is unable to pair stars efficiently, which leads to the conclusion that star-forming cores must usually fragment into \geq 2 stars. However,…