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For various species of biological cells, experimental observations indicate the existence of universal distributions of the cellular size, scaling relations between the cell-size moments and simple rules for the cell-size control. We…
We investigate clustering of malignant glioma cells. \emph{In vitro} experiments in collagen gels identified a cell line that formed clusters in a region of low cell density, whereas a very similar cell line (which lacks an important…
Random graphs have played an instrumental role in modelling real-world networks arising from the internet topology, social networks, or even protein-interaction networks within cells. Percolation, on the other hand, has been the fundamental…
Transcription is a fundamental cellular process, and the first step of gene expression. In human cells, it depends on the binding to chromatin of various proteins, including RNA polymerases and numerous transcription factors (TFs).…
Collective cell migration plays an essential role in various biological processes, such as development or cancer proliferation. While cell-cell interactions are clearly key determinants of collective cell migration -- in addition to…
A model of cellular metabolism due to S. Kauffman is analyzed. It consists of a network of Boolean gates randomly assembled according to a probability distribution. It is shown that the behavior of the network depends very critically on…
Developing epithelial tissues coordinate cell proliferation and mechanical forces to achieve proper size and shape. As epithelial cells tightly adhere together to form the confluent tissue, the distribution of cell areas significantly…
Collective cell movement, characterized by multiple cells that are in contact for substantial periods of time and undergo correlated motion, plays a central role in cancer and embryogenesis. Recent imaging experiments have provided…
The hypothesis, that cortical dynamics operates near criticality also suggests, that it exhibits universal critical exponents which marks the Kuramoto equation, a fundamental model for synchronization, as a prime candidate for an underlying…
Single-cell experiments have revealed cell-to-cell variability in generation times and growth rates for genetically identical cells. Theoretical models relating the fluctuating generation times of single cells to the population growth rate…
We present a theory of pattern formation in growing domains inspired by biological examples of tissue development. Gradients of signaling molecules regulate growth, while growth changes these graded chemical patterns by dilution and…
While the role of local interactions in nonequilibrium phase transitions is well studied, a fundamental understanding of the effects of long-range interactions is lacking. We study the critical dynamics of reproducing agents subject to…
Microbial growth and division are fundamental processes relevant to many areas of life science. Of particular interest are homeostasis mechanisms, which buffer growth and division from accumulating fluctuations over multiple cycles. These…
Most physical and other natural systems are complex entities composed of a large number of interacting individual elements. It is a surprising fact that they often obey the so-called scaling laws relating an observable quantity with a…
Cell polarization plays a central role in the development of complex organisms. It has been recently shown that cell polarization may follow from the proximity to a phase separation instability in a bistable network of chemical reactions.…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Clemmesen's hook refers to a commonly observed slowdown and rebound in breast cancer incidence around the age at menopause. It suggests a shift in the underlying carcinogenic dynamics, but the mechanistic basis remains poorly understood.…
Mounting evidence underscores the prevalent hierarchical organization of cancer tissues. At the foundation of this hierarchy reside cancer stem cells, a subset of cells endowed with the pivotal role of engendering the entire cancer tissue…
Cell membranes are out of thermodynamic equilibrium notably because of membrane recycling, i.e. active exchange of material with the cytosol. We propose an analytically tractable model of biomembrane predicting the effects of recycling on…
This paper focuses on mechanical aspects of chromatin biological functioning. Within a basic geometric modeling of the chromatin assembly, we give for the first time the complete set of elastic constants (twist and bend persistence lengths,…