Related papers: Cell-to-cell variation sets a tissue-rheology-depe…
Autologous chemotaxis, in which cells secrete and detect molecules to determine the direction of fluid flow, is thwarted at high cell density because molecules from other cells interfere with a given cell's signal. Using a minimal model of…
Biological cells are often found to sense their chemical environment near the single-molecule detection limit. Surprisingly, this precision is higher than simple estimates of the fundamental physical limit, hinting towards active sensing…
Chemotaxis is the process by which cells behave in a way that follows the chemical gradient. Applications to bacteria growth, tissue inflammation, and vascular tumors provide a focus on optimization strategies. Experiments can characterize…
Receptor-ligand binding is a critical first step in signal transduction and the duration of the interaction can impact signal generation. In mammalian cells, clustering of receptors may be facilitated by heterogeneous zones of lipids, known…
Collective motion of cells is common in many physiological processes, including tissue development, repair, and tumor formation. Recent experiments have shown that certain malignant cancer cells form clusters in a chemoattractant gradient,…
The chemotaxis sensory system allows bacteria such as Escherichia coli to swim towards nutrients and away from repellents. The underlying pathway is remarkably sensitive in detecting chemical gradients over a wide range of ambient…
Cells need to reliably sense external ligand concentrations to achieve various biological functions such as chemotaxis or signaling. The molecular recognition of ligands by surface receptors is degenerate in many systems leading to…
Cells use surface receptors to estimate the concentration of external ligands. Limits on the accuracy of such estimations have been well studied for pairs of ligand and receptor species. However, the environment typically contains many…
As a response to ligand binding, transmembrane cell receptors often enhance their clustering, or oligomerization, during the signalling process. Here we present a statistical mechanical model which combines the aspects of clustering and…
Bacterial chemotaxis in Escherichia coli is a canonical system for the study of signal transduction. A remarkable feature of this system is the coexistence of precise adaptation in population with large fluctuating cellular behavior in…
Many types of cells are able to accurately sense shallow gradients of chemicals across their diameters, allowing the cells to move towards or away from chemical sources. This chemotactic ability relies on the remarkable capacity of cells to…
Living cells are capable of interacting with their environments in a variety of ways, including cell signalling, adhesion, and directed motion. These behaviours are often mediated by receptor molecules embedded in the cell membrane, which…
Chemotaxis of the bacterium Escherichia coli is well understood in shallow chemical gradients, but its swimming behavior remains difficult to interpret in steep gradients. By focusing on single-cell trajectories from simulations, we…
Metastasis is a process of cell migration that can be collective and guided by chemical cues. Viewing metastasis in this way, as a physical phenomenon, allows one to draw upon insights from other studies of collective sensing and migration…
In many sensory systems, transmembrane receptors are spatially organized in large clusters. Such arrangement may facilitate signal amplification and the integration of multiple stimuli. However, this organization likely also affects the…
Accurate gradient sensing is crucial for efficient chemotaxis in noisy environments, but the relationship between cell shape deformations and sensing accuracy is not well understood. Using a theoretical framework based on maximum likelihood…
Cells adapt to changing environments by sensing ligand concentrations using specific receptors. The accuracy of sensing is ultimately limited by the finite number of ligand molecules bound by receptors. Previously derived physical limits to…
We study methylation dynamics of the chemoreceptors as an {\sl E.coli} cell moves around in a spatially varying chemo-attractant environment. We consider attractant concentration with strong and weak spatial gradient. During the uphill and…
Biological systems like ciliated microorganisms are capable to respond to the external chemical gradients, a process known as chemotaxis which has been studied here using the chiral squirmer model. This theoretical model considers the…
We study the chemotaxis of a population of genetically identical swimming bacteria undergoing run and tumble dynamics driven by stochastic switching between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation of the flagellar rotary system.…