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Cellular decision-making based on information received from the external environment is frequently initiated by transmembrane receptors. These receptors are known to propagate such information by triggering a series of irreversible,…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…
When cells measure concentrations of chemical signals, they may average multiple measurements over time in order to reduce noise in their measurements. However, when cells are in a environment that changes over time, past measurements may…
A crucial step in the early development of multicellular organisms involves the establishment of spatial patterns of gene expression which later direct proliferating cells to take on different cell fates. These patterns enable the cells to…
Positive feedback regulation is ubiquitous in cell signaling networks, often leading to binary outcomes in response to graded stimuli. However, the role of such feedbacks in clustering, and in spatial spreading of activated molecules, has…
A cell is polarised when it has developed a main axis of organisation through the reorganisation of its cytosqueleton and its intracellular organelles. Polarisation can occur spontaneously or be triggered by external signals, like gradients…
We devise a method for predicting certain receptor-ligand binding behaviors, based on stochastic dynamical modelling. We consider the dynamics of a receptor binding to a ligand on the cell membrane, where the receptor and ligand perform…
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a highly complex structure through which biochemical and mechanical signals are transmitted. In processes of cell migration, the ECM also acts as a scaffold, providing structural support to cells as well as…
Signaling networks are designed to sense an environmental stimulus and adapt to it. We propose and study a minimal model of signaling network that can sense and respond to external stimuli of varying strength in an adaptive manner. The…
Electrical neural signalling typically takes place at the time-scale of milliseconds, and is typically modeled using the cable equation. This is a good approximation for processes when ionic concentrations vary little during the time course…
Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…
Spatial distributions of morphogens provide positional information in developing systems, but how the distributions are established and maintained remains an open problem. Transport by diffusion has been the traditional mechanism, but…
Biological cells rely on precise spatiotemporal coordination of biochemical reactions to control their many functions. Such cell signaling networks have been a common focus for mathematical models, but they remain challenging to simulate,…
Signaling events in eukaryotic cells are often guided by a scaffolding protein. Scaffold proteins assemble multiple proteins in a spatially localized signaling complex and exert numerous physical effects on signaling pathways. To study…
The phenomenon of cell sorting/segregation, by which cells organise spatially into clusters of specific cell type or function, is essential for tissue morphogenesis. This self-organization process involves an interplay between mechanical,…
The physical limit with which a cell senses external ligand concentration corresponds to the perfect absorber, where all ligand particles are absorbed and overcounting of same ligand particles does not occur. Here we analyze how the lateral…
To adapt their behaviour in changing environments, cells sense concentrations by binding external ligands to their receptors. However, incorrect ligands may bind nonspecifically to receptors, and when their concentration is large, this…
In eukaryotic genomes, nucleosomes function to compact DNA and to regulate access to it both by simple physical occlusion and by providing the substrate for numerous covalent epigenetic tags. While nucleosome positions in vitro are…
When dedicated positioning systems, such as GPS, are unavailable, a mobile device has no choice but to fall back on its cellular network for localization. Due to random variations in the channel conditions to its surrounding base stations…