Related papers: The biological frontier of pattern formation
The problem of morphogenesis and Turing instability are revisited from the point of view of dimensionality effects. First the linear analysis of a generic Turing model is elaborated to the case of multiple stationary states, which may lead…
Polarity fields are known to exhibit long distance patterns, in both physical and biological systems. The mechanisms behind such patterns are poorly understood. Here, we describe the dynamics of polarity fields using an original physical…
Dissipative phenomena manifest in multiple mechanical systems. In this dissertation, different geometric frameworks for modelling non-conservative dynamics are considered. The objective is to generalize several results from conservative…
It is proposed that the spatial (and temporal) patterns spontaneously appearing in dissipative systems maximize the energy flow through the pattern forming interface. In other words - the patterns maximize the entropy growth rate in an…
Many materials, processes, and structures in science and engineering have important features at multiple scales of time and/or space; examples include biological tissues, active matter, oceans, networks, and images. Explicitly extracting,…
Composition is a powerful principle for systems biology, focused on the interfaces, interconnections, and orchestration of distributed processes to enable integrative multiscale simulations. Whereas traditional models focus on the structure…
Chemical waves constitute a known class of dissipative structures emerging in reaction-diffusion systems. They play a crucial role in biology, spreading information rapidly to synchronize and coordinate biological events. We develop a…
Subcritical Turing bifurcations of reaction-diffusion systems in large domains lead to spontaneous onset of well-developed localised patterns via the homoclinic snaking mechanism. This phenomenon is shown to occur naturally when balancing…
Morphogenesis of complex body shapes is reproducible despite the noise inherent in the underlying morphogenetic processes. However, how these morphogenetic processes work together to achieve this reproducibility remains unclear. Here, we…
A class of systems is considered, where immobile species associated to distinct patches, the nodes of a network, interact both locally and at a long-range, as specified by an (interaction) adjacency matrix. Non local interactions are…
Far from equilibrium, chemical and biological systems can form complex patterns and waves through reaction-diffusion coupling. Fluid motion often interferes with these self-organized concentration patterns. In this study, we investigate the…
The self-organization of proteins into enriched compartments and the formation of complex patterns are crucial processes for life on the cellular level. Liquid-liquid phase separation is one mechanism for forming such enriched compartments.…
Morphogenesis emerges from dynamic feedback among geometry, mechanics, and chemistry; however, disentangling these contributions in living systems remains challenging. Here, we focus on the interplay between geometry and mechanics by…
Reaction-diffusion (Turing) systems are fundamental to the formation of spatial patterns in nature and engineering. These systems are governed by a set of non-linear partial differential equations containing parameters that determine the…
Complex spatiotemporal patterns in nature significantly challenge reductionism-based modern science. The lack of a paradigm beyond reductionism hinders our understanding of the emergence of complexity. The diversity of countless patterns…
Many of life's most fascinating phenomena emerge from interactions among many elements--many amino acids determine the structure of a single protein, many genes determine the fate of a cell, many neurons are involved in shaping our thoughts…
The discipline of `theoretical biology' has been developing from its inception several decades ago almost in parallel with the advances in biology, so much so that the latter is often considered to be almost exclusively an empirical…
Biological systems are influenced by fluid mechanics at nearly all spatiotemporal scales. This broad relevance of fluid mechanics to biology has been increasingly appreciated by engineers and biologists alike, leading to continued expansion…
Life on earth is distinguished by long-lived correlations in time. The patterns of material organization that characterize living organisms today are contingent on events that occurred billions of years ago. This contingency is a necessary…
The recent discovery of universal principles underlying many complex networks occurring across a wide range of length scales in the biological world has spurred physicists in trying to understand such features using techniques from…