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Handedness in humans - better performance using either the left or right hand - is personally familiar, moderately heritable, and regulated by many genes, including those involved in general body symmetry. But behavioral handedness, i.e.…

We examine a spatially discrete reaction diffusion model based on the interactions that create a periodic pattern in the Drosophila eye imaginal disc. This model is capable of generating a regular hexagonal pattern of gene expression behind…

Even the simplest of animals exhibit behavioral sequences with complex temporal dynamics. Prominent amongst the proposed organizing principles for these dynamics has been the idea of a hierarchy, wherein the movements an animal makes can be…

Decoding the direction of translating objects in front of cluttered moving backgrounds, accurately and efficiently, is still a challenging problem. In nature, lightweight and low-powered flying insects apply motion vision to detect a moving…

Gene expression levels are important molecular quantitative traits that link genotypes to molecular functions and fitness. In Drosophila, population-genetic studies in recent years have revealed substantial adaptive evolution at the genomic…

Flies that walk in a covered planar arena on straight paths avoid colliding with each other, but which of the two flies stops is not random. High-throughput video observations, coupled with dedicated experiments with controlled robot flies…

Dominant negative mutations in the insulin gene are the second most common cause of permanent neonatal diabetes. However, variation in severity and penetrance of neonatal diabetes, as in other complex genetic diseases, cannot be accounted…

Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…

As ecologists increasingly adopt stochastic models over deterministic ones, the question arises: when is this a positive development and when is this an unnecessary complication? While deterministic models -- like the Lotka-Volterra model…

A model of pattern formation in living systems is presented. The pattern is achieved by the sequential interaction of two signaling pathways. The coupling of the pattern to the (thick) epithelial sheet changes is given, when the Gauss…

During organogenesis, developmental programs governed by Gene Regulatory Networks (GRN) define the functionality, size and shape of the different constituents of living organisms. Robustness, thus, is an essential characteristic that GRNs…

During development of biological organisms, multiple complex structures are formed. In many instances, these structures need to exhibit a high degree of order to be functional, although many of their constituents are intrinsically…

Phase separation accompanied by further domain growth and coarsening is a phenomenon common to a broad variety of dynamical systems. In this connection, controlling such processes represents a relevant interdisciplinary problem. Using…

The concentration gradient of the Bicoid morphogen, which is established during the early stages of a Drosophila melanogaster embryonic development, determines the differential spatial patterns of gene expression and subsequent cell fate…

The identification and validation of gene-gene interactions is a major challenge in human studies. Here, we explore an approach for studying epistasis in humans using a Drosophila melanogaster model of neonatal diabetes mellitus. Expression…

Differences in transcriptional regulatory networks underlie much of the phenotypic variation observed across organisms. Changes to cis-regulatory elements are widely believed to be the predominant means by which regulatory networks evolve,…

We introduce and analyze a class of neural network models motivated by the Drosophila central complex nervous system, designed to capture the emergence and dynamics of orientation-selective activity bumps. Starting from a biologically…

Modeling stochasticity in gene regulatory networks is an important and complex problem in molecular systems biology. To elucidate intrinsic noise, several modeling strategies such as the Gillespie algorithm have been used successfully. This…

Systems in nature are stochastic as well as nonlinear. In traditional applications, engineered filters aim to minimize the stochastic effects caused by process and measurement noise. Conversely, a previous study showed that the process…

During development, highly ordered structures emerge as cells collectively coordinate with each other. While recent advances have clarified how individual cells process and respond to external signals, understanding collective cellular…