Related papers: Interrogating the Escherichia coli cell cycle by c…
In stable environments, cell size fluctuations are thought to be governed by simple physical principles, as suggested by recent findings of scaling properties. Here, by developing a microfluidic device and using E. coli, we investigate the…
The Min system in Escherichia coli directs division to the centre of the cell through pole-to-pole oscillations of the MinCDE proteins. We present a one dimensional stochastic model of these oscillations which incorporates membrane…
Control of cell proliferation is a fundamental aspect of tissue physiology central to morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer. Although many of the molecular genetic factors are now known, the system level regulation of growth is still…
The expansion of biological species in natural environments is usually described as the combined effect of individual spatial dispersal and growth. In the case of aquatic ecosystems flow transport can also be extremely relevant as an extra,…
Adaptation of the chemotaxis sensory pathway of the bacterium Escherichia coli is integral for detecting chemicals over a wide range of background concentrations, ultimately allowing cells to swim towards sources of attractant and away from…
To swim through a viscous fluid, a flagellated bacterium must overcome the fluid drag on its body by rotating a flagellum or a bundle of multiple flagella. Because the drag increases with the size of bacteria, it is expected theoretically…
Bacteria in bulk fluids swim collectively and display fascinating emergent dynamics. Although bacterial collective swimming in three-dimensional (3D) geometries has been well studied, its counterpart in confined two-dimensional (2D)…
Gene networks exhibiting oscillatory dynamics are widespread in biology. The minimal regulatory designs giving rise to oscillations have been implemented synthetically and studied by mathematical modeling. However, most of the available…
Bacterial cells exhibit a diverse array of shapes and sizes, largely governed by their cell walls in conjunction with cytoskeletal proteins and internal turgor pressure. The present study develops a theoretical framework for modeling the…
With the number of fully-sequenced genomes now well over a hundred it has become possible to start investigating if there are any quantitative regularities in the genetic make-up of genomes. In (physics/0307001), I originally showed that…
The mean length and the variability of coding sequences for 48 genomes of bacteria and archaea were analyzed. It was found that the plotted data can be described by an angular area. This suggests the followings: a) The variability of a…
The intricate wobbling motion of flagellated bacteria, characterized by the periodic precession of the cell body, is a determinant factor in their motility and navigation within complex fluid environments. While well-studied in quiescent…
Which properties of metabolic networks can be derived solely from stoichiometric information about the network's constituent reactions? Predictive results have been obtained by Flux Balance Analysis (FBA), by postulating that cells set…
Yeast cells grown in culture can spontaneously synchronize their respiration, metabolism, gene expression and cell division. Such metabolic oscillations in synchronized cultures reflect single-cell oscillations, but the relationship between…
Bacterial growth and division generally occur by the process known as binary fission, in which the cells grow polarly until they divide into two daughter cells. Although this process is affected by factors that introduce stochastic…
The emergence of spatial patterns and organized growth is a hallmark of developing tissues. While symmetry-breaking and scaling laws govern these processes, how cells coordinate spatial patterning with size regulation remains unclear. Here,…
We study non-equilibrium bacterial colony growth using a geometry-first, time-resolved analysis of morphology. From time-lapse microscopy data, we track the coupled evolution of area, perimeter, and boundary-sensitive shape descriptors…
Shape is one of the important characteristics for the structures observed in living organisms. Whereas biologists have proposed models where the shape is controlled on a molecular level [1], physicists, following Turing [2] and d'Arcy…
We use moving light patterns to control the motion of {\it Escherichia coli} bacteria whose motility is photo-activated. Varying the pattern speed controls the magnitude and direction of the bacterial flux, and therefore the accumulation of…
In exponentially proliferating populations of microbes, the population typically doubles at a rate less than the average doubling time of a single-cell due to variability at the single-cell level. It is known that the distribution of…