Related papers: Origin and Quantitative Control of Sertoli Cells
Spermatogenesis is sustained by the proliferation and differentiation of spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs). SSCs are derived from primordial germ cells (PGCs) during embryonic development. The signal from the mammalian embryonic tissue is…
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…
Cancer stem cells are controlled by developmental networks that are often topologically indistinguishable from normal, healthy stem cells. The question is why cancer stem cells can be both phenotypically distinct and have morphological…
A blood cell lineage consists of several consecutive developmental stages from the pluripotent or multipotent stem cell to a particular stage of terminally differentiated cells. There is considerable interest in identifying the key…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
Development from egg to embryo to adult is a fascinating instance of biological self-organization for which genetics has supplied us with a parts list. It remains to find the principles organizing the assembly of those parts. In the last…
Cell growth and gene expression, essential elements of all living systems, have long been the focus of biophysical interrogation. Advances in single-cell methods have invigorated theoretical studies into these processes. However, until…
Single-cell experiments revealed substantial variability in generation times, growth rates but also in birth and division sizes between genetically identical cells. Understanding how these fluctuations determine the fitness of the…
A key process in the life of any multicellular organism is its development from a single egg into a full grown adult. The first step in this process often consists of forming a tissue layer out of randomly placed cells on the surface of the…
As the first step in an investigation of the origin of genetic information, we study how some species of molecules are preserved over cell generations and play an important role in controlling the growth of a cell. We consider a model…
The work is devoted to the analysis of cell population dynamics where cells make a choice between differentiation and apoptosis. This choice is based on the values of intracellular proteins whose concentrations are described by a system of…
Gene expression is inherently noisy, posing a challenge to understanding how precise and reproducible patterns of gene expression emerge in mammals. We investigate this phenomenon using gastruloids, an in vitro model for early mammalian…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
A key limiting step in fertility is the search for the oocyte by spermatozoa. Initially, there are tens of millions of sperm cells, but a single one will make it to the oocyte. This may be one of the most severe selection processes designed…
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…
Sex chromosomes have evolved repeatedly across the Tree of Life, yet their evolutionary fates differ strikingly. In sharp contrast to mammals and birds with degenerated, stable Y/W chromosomes, in most amphibians, teleosts, non avian…
Sporulation in Bacillus subtilis serves as a paradigm for the development of two different cell types (mother cell and prespore) from a single cell. The mechanism by which the two different developmental programs are initiated has been much…
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…
The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth,…
How far is neuroepithelial cell proliferation in the developing central nervous system a deterministic process? Or, to put it in a more precise way, how accurately can it be described by a deterministic mathematical model? To provide tracks…