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Eukaryotic cells are large enough to detect signals and then orient to them by differentiating the signal strength across the length and breadth of the cell. Amoebae, fibroblasts, neutrophils and growth cones all behave in this way. Little…
CRISPR technology has enabled large-scale cell lineage tracing for complex multicellular organisms by mutating synthetic genomic barcodes during organismal development. However, these sophisticated biological tools currently use ad-hoc and…
Biological systems represent time from microseconds to years. An important gap in our knowledge concerns the mechanisms for encoding time intervals of hundreds of milliseconds to minutes that matter for tasks like navigation, communication,…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
In this thesis we develop minimal models of the relationship between motility, growth, and evolution of cancer cells. We utilise simple simulations of a population of individual cells in space to examine how changes in mechanical properties…
Comparative and evolutive ecologists are interested in the distribution of quantitative traits among related species. The classical framework for these distributions consists of a random process running along the branches of a phylogenetic…
Metabolic heterogeneity is widely recognised as the next challenge in our understanding of non-genetic variation. A growing body of evidence suggests that metabolic heterogeneity may result from the inherent stochasticity of intracellular…
Heterogeneity within tumour cell populations is associated with an increase in malignancy and appears to play an important role during cancer metastasis. Using in silico experiments, we study the interplay between collective behaviours and…
The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence…
In chemotaxis, cells are modulating their migration patterns in response to concentration gradients of a guiding substance. Immune cells are believed to use such chemotactic sensing for remotely detecting and homing in on pathogens.…
Eukaryotic cell motility involves a complex network of interactions between biochemical components and mechanical processes. The cell employs this network to polarize and induce shape changes that give rise to membrane protrusions and…
The spatial propagation of many livestock infectious diseases critically depends on the animal movements among premises; so the knowledge of movement data may help us to detect, manage and control an outbreak. The identification of robust…
Migration of cells can be characterized by two, prototypical types of motion: individual and collective migration. We propose a statistical-inference approach designed to detect the presence of cell-cell interactions that give rise to…
A common view in evolutionary biology is that mutation rates are minimised. However, studies in combinatorial optimisation and search have shown a clear advantage of using variable mutation rates as a control parameter to optimise the…
Long-term videomicroscopy and computer-aided statistical analysis were used to determine some characteristic parameters of in vitro cell motility and proliferation in three established cell lines derived from human glioblastoma tumors.…
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,…
Selecting active matter based on its motility represents a challenging task, as it requires different approaches than common separation techniques intended for separation based on, e.g., size, shape, density, and flexibility. This…
We introduce a generic, purely mechanical model for environment sensitive motion of mammalian cells that is applicable to chemotaxis, haptotaxis, and durotaxis as modes of motility. It is able to theoretically explain all relevant…
We investigate the maximum caliber variational principle as an inference algorithm used to predict dynamical properties of complex nonequilibrium, stationary, statistical systems in the presence of incomplete information. Specifically, we…