Related papers: Origin and Quantitative Control of Sertoli Cells
Human embryonic stem cells (ESC) are undifferentiated and are endowed with the capacities of self renewal and pluripotential differentiation. Adult stem cells renew their own tissue, but whether they can trans-differentiate to other tissues…
MicroRNAs are extensively known for post-transcriptional gene regulation and pattern formation in the embryonic developmental stage. We explore the origin of these spatio-temporal patterns mathematically, considering three different motifs…
Spindles are self-organized microtubule-based structures that segregate chromosomes during cell division. The mass of the spindle is controlled by the balance between microtubule turnover and nucleation. The mechanisms that control the…
Sperm traverse their microenvironment through viscous fluid by propagating flagellar waves; the waveform emerges as a consequence of elastic structure, internal active moments, and low Reynolds number fluid dynamics. Engineered…
Homeostasis of protein concentrations in cells is crucial for their proper functioning, and this requires concentrations (at their steady-state levels) to be stable to fluctuations. Since gene expression is regulated by proteins such as…
We typically think of cells as responding to external signals independently by regulating their gene expression levels, yet they often locally exchange information and coordinate. Can such spatial coupling be of benefit for conveying…
We propose a physical model for developmental process at cellular level to discuss the mechanism of epigenetic landscape. In our simplified model, a minimal model, the network of the interaction among cells generates the landscape…
A theoretical study of cell evolution is presented here. By using a toolbox containing an intracellular catalytic reaction network model and a mutation-selection process, four distinct phases of self-organization were unveiled. First, the…
The proper functioning of multicellular organisms requires the robust establishment of precise proportions between distinct cell-types. This developmental differentiation process typically involves intracellular regulatory and stochastic…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…
Biological functions in living cells are controlled by protein interaction and genetic networks. These molecular networks should be dynamically stable against various fluctuations which are inevitable in the living world. In this paper, we…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
All types of blood cells are formed by differentiation from a small self-maintaining population of pluri-potential stem cells in the bone marrow. Despite abundant information on the molecular aspects of division, differentiation, commitment…
Cycling tissues such as the intestinal epithelium, germ line, and hair follicles, require a constant flux of differentiated cells. These tissues are maintained by a population of stem cells, which generate differentiated progenies and…
We study time continuous branching processes with exponentially distributed lifetimes, with two types of cells that proliferate according to binary fission. A range of possible system dynamics are considered, each of which is characterized…
The genetic material of a eukaryotic cell comprises both nuclear DNA (ncDNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). These differ markedly in several aspects but nevertheless must encode proteins that are compatible with one another. Here we…
Investigating the emergence of a particular cell type is a recurring theme in models of growing cellular populations. The evolution of resistance to therapy is a classic example. Common questions are: when does the cell type first occur,…
A genetic switch may be realised by a certain operator sector on the DNA strand from which either genetic code, to the left or to the right of this operator sector, can be transcribed and the corresponding information processed. This switch…
The mechanism of bacterial cell size control has been a mystery for decades, which involves the well-coordinated growth and division in the cell cycle. The revolutionary modern techniques of microfluidics and the advanced live imaging…
A great variety of molecular components is encapsulated in cells. Each of these components is replicated for cell reproduction. To address an essential role of the huge diversity of cellular components, we study a model of protocells that…