Related papers: Non-genetic diversity modulates population perform…

Two species with similar resource requirements respond in a characteristic way to variations in their habitat -- their abundances rise and fall in concert. We use this idea to learn how bacterial populations in the microbiota respond to…

Recent studies have shown that packings of cells, both eukaryotic cellular tissues and growing or swarming bacterial colonies, can often be understood as active nematic fluids. A key property of volume-conserving active nematic model…

Populations are heterogeneous, deviating in numerous ways. Phenotypic diversity refers to the range of traits or characteristics across a population, where for cells this could be the levels of signalling, movement and growth activity, etc.…

We review models of biological evolution in which the population frequency changes deterministically with time. If the population is self-replicating, although the equations for simple prototypes can be linearised, nonlinear equations arise…

Stochastic multiplicative dynamics characterize many complex natural phenomena such as selection and mutation in evolving populations, and the generation and distribution of wealth within social systems. Population heterogeneity in…

Biofilms are microbial collectives that occupy a diverse array of surfaces. The function and evolution of biofilms are strongly influenced by the spatial arrangement of different strains and species within them, but how spatiotemporal…

When a collection of phenotypically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources, with competition being strongest amongst the most similar, the population can evolve into tightly localised clusters. This process can be…

Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…

In microbial communities, each species often has multiple, distinct phenotypes, but studies of ecological stability have largely ignored this subpopulation structure. Here, we show that such implicit averaging over phenotypes leads to…

We study the long-time behaviour of phenotype-structured models describing the evolutionary dynamics of asexual species whose phenotypic fitness landscape is characterised by multiple peaks. First we consider the case where phenotypic…

Phenotype variations define heterogeneity of biological and molecular systems, which play a crucial role in several mechanisms. Heterogeneity has been demonstrated in tumor cells. Here, samples from blood of patients affected from colon…

Many species of microbes cooperate by producing public goods from which they collectively benefit. However, these populations are under the risk of being taken over by cheating mutants that do not contribute to the pool of public goods.…

The evolutionary and ecological processes behind the origin of species are among the most fundamental problems in biology. In fact, many theoretical hypothesis on different type of speciation have been proposed. In particular, models of…

With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…

We develop a continuous mathematical model of population dynamics that describes the sequential emergence of new genotypes under limited resources. The framework models genotype density as a nonlinear flow in mutation space, combining…

Populations can become spatially organised through chemotaxis autoattraction, wherein population members release their own chemoattractant. Standard models of this process usually assume phenotypic homogeneity, but recent studies have shed…

Topological defects are increasingly being identified in various biological systems, where their characteristic flow fields and stress patterns are associated with continuous active stress generation by biological entities. Here, using…

Two hallmarks of non-equilibrium systems, from active colloids to animal herds, are agents motility and nonreciprocal interactions. Their interplay creates feedback loops leading to complex spatiotemporal dynamics crucial to understand and…

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…

Phenotypic heterogeneity is a strategy commonly used by bacteria to rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions. Here, we study the interplay between phenotypic heterogeneity and genetic diversity in spatially extended populations.…