Related papers: Effective Potential for Cellular Size Control
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
We consider an age-size structured cell population model based on the cell cycle length. The model is described by a first order partial differential equation with initial-boundary conditions. Using the theory of semigroups of positive…
Establishing a quantitative connection between the population growth rate and the generation times of single cells is a prerequisite for understanding evolutionary dynamics of microbes. However, existing theories fail to account for the…
We consider a class of biologically-motivated stochastic processes in which a unicellular organism divides its resources (volume or damaged proteins, in particular) symmetrically or asymmetrically between its progeny. Assuming the final…
Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…
A simple model of particle creation and annihilation in an isolated assembly of particles with conserved energy and fixed volume, the Cell Model, is formulated. With increasing time, particle number distribution, obtained by averaging over…
Cell migration is closely linked to cell shape, yet cell size is often assumed to remain constant. This assumption is challenged by recent experiments showing that cells undergo volume loss during spreading and swelling upon activation,…
Stem cells are characterized by their ability to self-renew, as well as to differentiate and give rise to new populations of cells. Stem cell divisions are crucial for generative processes that occur during early development, and later in…
Using demographic data of high spatial resolution for a region in the south of Europe, we study the population over fixed-size spatial cells. We find that, counterintuitively, the distribution of the number of inhabitants per cell increases…
Solving population balance equations, we derive analytical steady-state cell size distributions for single-lineage experiments, such as the mother machine. These experiments are fundamentally different from batch cultures where populations…
Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…
Nearly all cell models explicitly or implicitly deal with the biophysical constraints that must be respected for life to persist. Despite this, there is almost no systematicity in how these constraints are implemented, and we lack a…
Micropatterned substrates are often used to standardize cell experiments and to quantitatively study the relation between cell shape and function. Moreover, they are increasingly used in combination with traction force microscopy on soft…
Bacteria are highly adaptive microorganisms that thrive in a wide range of growth conditions via changes in cell morphologies and macromolecular composition. How bacterial morphologies are regulated in diverse environmental conditions is a…
A recent burst of dynamic single-cell growth-division data makes it possible to characterize the stochastic dynamics of cell division control in bacteria. Different modeling frameworks were used to infer specific mechanisms from such data,…
How cells maintain a stable size has fascinated scientists since the beginning of modern biology, but has remained largely mysterious. Recently, however, the ability to analyze single bacteria in real time has provided new, important…
Studies on distribution, abundance and diversity of species revealed fascinating universalities in macroecology. Many of these patterns, like the species-area and range-abundance relationship or the year-to-year fluctuations in population…
The dynamical behavior of two types of non-equilibrium systems is discussed: $(a)$ two-dimensional cellular structures, and $(b)$ living polymers. Simple models governing their evolution are introduced and steady state distributions (cell…
For over two decades, Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) has been successfully used for predicting growth rates and intracellular reaction rates in microbiological metabolism. An aspect that is often omitted from this analysis, is segregation or…
In this paper, we study optimal control problems associated with a scalar hyperbolic conservation law modeling the development of ovarian follicles. Changes in the age and maturity of follicular cells are described by a 2D conservation law,…