Related papers: Co-evolution of the mitotic and meiotic modes of e…
Meiotic recombination is a fundamental feature of sexually reproducing species. It is often required for proper chromosome segregation and plays important role in adaptation and the maintenance of genetic diversity. The molecular mechanisms…
Cell-to-cell heterogeneity drives a range of (patho)physiologically important phenomena, such as cell fate and chemotherapeutic resistance. The role of metabolism, and particularly mitochondria, is increasingly being recognised as an…
Mitochondrial and nuclear genomes must be co-adapted to ensure proper cellular respiration and energy production. Mito-nuclear incompatibility reduces individual fitness and induces hybrid infertility, suggesting a possible role in…
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations cause severe congenital diseases but may also be associated with healthy aging. MtDNA is stochastically replicated and degraded, and exists within organelles which undergo dynamic fusion and fission. The…
A general theoretical framework is put forth to organize and understand various observed phenomena and mathematical relationships in the field of molecular biology. By modeling each cell in eukaryotic organisms as a processor having a…
This paper develops mathematical models describing the evolutionary dynamics of both asexually and sexually reproducing populations of diploid unicellular organisms. We consider two forms of genome organization. In one case, we assume that…
Mitochondrial function relies on the coordinated expression of mitochondrial and nuclear genes, exhibiting remarkable resilience regardless the susceptibility of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to accumulate harmful mutations. A suggested…
Maintaining tissue homeostasis requires appropriate regulation of stem cell differentiation. The Waddington landscape posits that gene circuits in a cell form a potential landscape of different cell types, wherein cells follow attractors of…
During mammalian embryo development, reprogramming of DNA methylation plays important roles in the erasure of parental epigenetic memory and the establishment of na\"{i}ve pluripogent cells. Multiple enzymes that regulate the processes of…
Development combines three basic processes asymmetric --- cell division, signaling and gene regulation --- in a multitude of ways to create an overwhelming diversity of multicellular life-forms. Here, we attempt to chart this diversity…
During the eukaryotic cell cycle, chromatin undergoes several conformational changes, which are believed to play key roles in gene expression regulation during interphase, and in genome replication and division during mitosis. In this…
Epigenetic observations are represented by the total number of reads from a given pool of cells and the number of methylated reads, making it reasonable to model this data by a binomial distribution. There are numerous factors that can…
Systemic properties of living cells are the result of molecular dynamics governed by so-called genetic regulatory networks (GRN). These networks capture all possible features of cells and are responsible for the immense levels of adaptation…
Differentiation is a key cellular process in normal tissue development that is significantly altered in cancer. Although molecular signatures characterising pluripotency and multipotency exist, there is, as yet, no single quantitative mark…
This paper presents a real-time simulation involving ''protozoan-like'' cells that evolve by natural selection in a physical 2D ecosystem. Selection pressure is exerted via the requirements to collect mass and energy from the surroundings…
Theories to explain the prevalence of sex and recombination have long been a central theme of evolutionary biology. Yet despite decades of attention dedicated to the evolution of sex and recombination, the widespread pattern of…
This paper introduces a continuous model for Multi-cellular Developmental Design. The cells are fixed on a 2D grid and exchange "chemicals" with their neighbors during the growth process. The quantity of chemicals that a cell produces, as…
I revisit two theories of cell differentiation in multicellular organisms published a half-century ago, Stuart Kauffman's global gene regulatory dynamics (GGRD) model and Roy Britten's and Eric Davidson's modular gene regulatory network…
Eukaryote genomes contain excessively introns, inter-genic and other non-genic sequences that appear to have no vital functional role or phenotype manifestation. Their existence, a long-standing puzzle, is viewed from the principle of…
Evolution of genetic code is studied as the change in the choice of enzymes that are used to synthesize amino acids from the genetic information of nucleic acids. We propose the following theory: the differentiation of physiological states…