Related papers: Cell-to-cell variability and robustness in S-phase…
The antibody repertoire of each individual is continuously updated by the evolutionary process of B cell receptor mutation and selection. It has recently become possible to gain detailed information concerning this process through…
A correlation between karyotype diversity and species richness was first observed in mammals in 1980, and subsequently confirmed after controlling for phylogenetic signal. The correlation was attributed to submicroscopic factors, presumably…
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…
Multiple phenotypic states often arise in a single cell with different gene-expression states that undergo transcription regulation with positive feedback. Recent experiments have shown that at least in E. coli, the gene state switching can…
The emergence of a predominant phenotype within a cell population is often triggered by a rare accumulation of DNA mutations in a single cell. For example, tumors may be initiated by a single cell in which multiple mutations cooperate to…
We formulate a kinetic model of DNA replication that quantitatively describes recent results on DNA replication in the in vitro system of Xenopus laevis prior to the mid-blastula transition. The model describes well a large amount of…
Telomeres are repetitive sequences of nucleotides at the end of chromosomes, whose evolution over time is intrinsically related to biological ageing. In most cells, with each cell division, telomeres shorten due to the so-called end…
The expression of genes usually follows a two-step procedure. First, a gene (encoded in the genome) is transcribed resulting in a strand of (messenger) RNA. Afterwards, the RNA is translated into protein. Classically, this gene expression…
Genome length varies widely among organisms, from compact genomes of prokaryotes to vast and complex genomes of eukaryotes. In this study, we theoretically identify the evolutionary pressures that may have driven this divergence in genome…
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…
Meiotic recombination is a fundamental feature of sexually reproducing species. It is often required for proper chromosome segregation and plays important role in adaptation and the maintenance of genetic diversity. The molecular mechanisms…
Maintaining tissue homeostasis requires appropriate regulation of stem cell differentiation. The Waddington landscape posits that gene circuits in a cell form a potential landscape of different cell types, wherein cells follow attractors of…
We develop a stochastic framework for viral population dynamics at the cellular level that explicitly incorporates the replication cycle with random stage durations. The model is formulated as a structured birth-death process coupled with a…
Recently, several theoretical and experimental studies have been undertaken to probe the effect of stochasticity on gene expression (GE). In experiments, the GE response to an inducing signal in a cell, measured by the amount of…
Phenotypic variation is a hallmark of cellular physiology. Metabolic heterogeneity, in particular, underpins single-cell phenomena such as microbial drug tolerance and growth variability. Much research has focussed on transcriptomic and…
How much information does a cell inherit from its ancestors beyond its genetic sequence? What are the epigenetic mechanisms that allow this? Despite the rise in available epigenetic data, how such information is inherited through the cell…
In the last years, tens of thousands gene expression profiles for cells of several organisms have been monitored. Gene expression is a complex transcriptional process where mRNA molecules are translated into proteins, which control most of…
Transcriptional pulsing has been observed in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes and plays a crucial role in cell to cell variability of protein and mRNA numbers. The issue is how the time constants associated with episodes of transcriptional…
Response time-delay is an ubiquitous phenomenon in biological systems. Here we use a simple stochastic population model with time-delayed switching-rate conversion to quantitatively study the biological influence of the response time-delay…
Cells adapt to different conditions by altering a vast number of components, which is measurable using transcriptome analysis. Given that a cell undergoing steady growth is constrained to sustain each of its internal components, the…