Related papers: Accuracy of position determination in Ca$^{2+}$ si…
We typically think of cells as responding to external signals independently by regulating their gene expression levels, yet they often locally exchange information and coordinate. Can such spatial coupling be of benefit for conveying…
Development in multi-cellular organisms is marked by a high degree of spatial organization of the cells attaining distinct fates in the embryo. We show that receptor-ligand interaction between cells in close physical proximity adaptively…
Cell decision-making refers to the process by which cells gather information from their local microenvironment and regulate their internal states to create appropriate responses. Microenvironmental cell sensing plays a key role in this…
Cells sense and predict their environment via energy-dissipating pathways. However, it is unclear whether dissipation helps or harms prediction. Here we study dissipation and prediction for a minimal sensory module of receptors that…
Protein phosphorylation is a reversible post-translational modification commonly used by cell signaling networks to transmit information about the extracellular environment into intracellular organelles for the regulation of the activity…
Cells continuously probe their environment with membrane receptors, achieving subsecond adaptation of their behaviour [1-3]. Recently, several receptors, including cadherins, were found to bind ligands with a lifetime of order of one…
The precision of concentration sensing is improved when cells communicate. Here we derive the physical limits to concentration sensing for cells that communicate over short distances by directly exchanging small molecules (juxtacrine…
A cell routinely responds to one of many competing environmental cues. A fundamental question is whether the cell follows the cue prioritized by its internal signaling network or the cue that carries the most external information. We…
The hippocampus supports spatial navigation by encoding cognitive maps through collective place cell activity. We model the place cell population as non-negative spatial embeddings derived from the spectral decomposition of multi-step…
Cells crawling through tissues migrate inside a complex fibrous environment called the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides signals regulating motility. Here we investigate one such well-known pathway, involving mutually antagonistic…
Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…
We present a stochastic computational model to study the mechanism of signalling between a source and a target ionic transporter, both localized on the plasma membrane (PM) and in intracellular nanometre-scale subplasmalemmal signalling…
Many biological, physical, and social interactions have a particular dependence on where they take place. In living cells, protein movement between the nucleus and cytoplasm affects cellular response (i.e., proteins must be present in the…
The concentration of intracellular calcium ion (Ca$^{2+}$) exhibits complex oscillations, including bursting and chaos, as observed experimentally. These dynamics are influenced by inherent fluctuations within cells, which serve as crucial…
Scaffolding proteins that direct the assembly of multiple kinases into a spatially localized signaling complex are often essential for the maintenance of an appropriate biological response. Although scaffolds are widely believed to have…
Double phosphorylation of protein kinases is a common feature of signalling cascades. This motif may reduce cross-talk between signalling pathways, as the second phosphorylation site allows for proofreading, especially when phosphorylation…
We study the dynamics of intracellular calcium oscillations in the presence of proteins that bind calcium on multiple sites and that are generally believed to act as passive calcium buffers in cells. We find that multisite calcium-binding…
In this work we upscale a prototypical kinetic transport equation which models a cell population moving in a fibrous environment with a chemo- or haptotactic signal influencing both the direction and the magnitude of the cell velocity. The…
When it is polarised, a cell develops an asymmetric distribution of specific molecular markers, cytoskeleton and cell membrane shape. Polarisation can occur spontaneously or be triggered by external signals, like gradients of signalling…
During cell migration, cells become polarized, change their shape, and move in response to various internal and external cues. Cell polarization is defined through the spatio-temporal organization of molecules such as PI3K or small GTPases,…