Related papers: How adaptive immunity constrains the composition a…
Microbial communities frequently communicate via quorum sensing (QS), where cells produce, secrete, and respond to a threshold level of an autoinducer (AI) molecule, thereby modulating gene expression. However, the biology of QS remains…
In Escherichia coli the response to DNA damage shows strong cell-to-cell-heterogenity. This results in a random delay in cell division and asymmetrical binary fission of single cells, which can compromise the size homeostasis of the…
In bacterial populations, cells are able to cooperate in order to yield complex collective functionalities. Interest in population-level cellular behaviour is increasing, due to both our expanding knowledge of the underlying biological…
Bacterial chemotaxis systems are as diverse as the environments that bacteria inhabit, but how much environmental variation can cells tolerate with a single system? Diversification of a single chemotaxis system could serve as an…
The evolution of antimicrobial resistance generally occurs in an environment where antimicrobial concentration is variable, which has dramatic consequences on the microorganisms' fitness landscape, and thus on the evolution of resistance.…
Microorganisms employ sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication and environmental sensing, with quorum sensing serving as a fundamental regulatory process. Dysregulation of quorum sensing has been implicated in various…
The intestinal microbiota plays important roles in digestion and resistance against entero-pathogens. As with other ecosystems, its species composition is resilient against small disturbances but strong perturbations such as antibiotics can…
This article presents a physical biology approach to understanding organization and segregation of bacterial chromosomes. The author uses a "piston" analogy for bacterial chromosomes in a cell, which leads to a phase diagram for the…
Three state-of-the-art adaptive population control strategies (PCS) are theoretically and empirically investigated for a multi-recombinative, cumulative step-size adaptation Evolution Strategy $(\mu/\mu_I, \lambda)$-CSA-ES. First, scaling…
Certain defense mechanisms of phages against the immune system of their bacterial host rely on cooperation of phages. Motivated by this example we analyse invasion probabilities of cooperative parasites in host populations that are…
Conjugation is the primary mechanism of horizontal gene transfer that spreads antibiotic resistance among bacteria. Although conjugation normally occurs in surface-associated growth (e.g., biofilms), it has been traditionally studied in…
Susceptibility governs the dynamics of contagion. The classical SIR model is one of the simplest compartmental models of contagion spread, assuming a single shared susceptibility level. However, variation in susceptibility over a population…
Phage therapy is an alternative treatment method for bacterial infections. It has shown particular promise in reducing bacterial load while preventing antibiotic resistance. Here, we develop a mathematical model of a bacterial infection…
We present a two-species population model in a well-mixed environment where the dynamics involves, in addition to birth and death, changes due to environmental factors and inter-species interactions. The novel dynamical components are…
The phage $\lambda$ infection of an \textit{E. coli} cell has become a paradigm for understanding the molecular processes involved in gene expression and cell signaling. This system provides an example of a genetic switch, as cells with…
Bacteria and their bacteriophages are the most abundant, widespread and diverse groups of biological entities on the planet. In an attempt to understand how the interactions between bacteria, virulent phages and temperate phages might…
Biological evolution of a population is governed by the fitness landscape, which is a map from genotype to fitness. However, a fitness landscape depends on the organisms environment, and evolution in changing environments is still poorly…
Bacterial swarming is a rapid mass-migration, in which thousands of cells spread collectively to colonize a surface. Physically, swarming is a natural example of active particles that use energy to generate motion. Accordingly,…
Cells receive a wide variety of cellular and environmental signals, which must be processed combinatorially to generate specific and timely genetic responses. We present here a theoretical study on the combinatorial control and integration…
Pathogen-mediated competition, through which an invasive species carrying and transmitting a pathogen can be a superior competitor to a more vulnerable resident species, is one of the principle driving forces influencing biodiversity in…