Related papers: Cellular memory enhances bacterial chemotactic nav…

The intricate wobbling motion of flagellated bacteria, characterized by the periodic precession of the cell body, is a determinant factor in their motility and navigation within complex fluid environments. While well-studied in quiescent…

Organisms use specialized sensors to measure their environments, but the fundamental principles that determine their accuracy remain largely unknown. In Escherichia coli chemotaxis, we previously found that gradient-climbing speed is…

Single eukaryotic cells commonly sense and follow chemical gradients, performing chemotaxis. Recent experiments and theories, however, show that even when single cells do not chemotax, clusters of cells may, if their interactions are…

Interaction of swimming bacteria with flows controls their ability to explore complex environments, crucial to many societal and environmental challenges and relevant for microfluidic applications as cell sorting. Combining experimental,…

Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…

We introduce stochastic models of chemotaxis generalizing the deterministic Keller-Segel model. These models include fluctuations which are important in systems with small particle numbers or close to a critical point. Following Dean's…

The effect of short-term and long-term memory on spontaneous aggregation of organisms is investigated using a stochastic agent-based model. Each individual modulates the amplitude of its random motion according to the perceived local…

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a flexible and efficient method for programming micro-robots in complex environments. Here we investigate whether reinforcement learning can provide insights into biological systems when trained to perform…

For navigation, microscopic agents such as biological cells rely on noisy sensory input. In cells performing chemotaxis, such noise arises from the stochastic binding of signaling molecules at low concentrations. Using chemotaxis of sperm…

Adaptation to changing environments is a universal feature of life and can involve the organism modifying itself in response to the environment as well as actively modifying the environment to control selection pressures. The latter case…

When a single cell senses a chemical gradient and chemotaxes, stochastic receptor-ligand binding can be a fundamental limit to the cell's accuracy. For clusters of cells responding to gradients, however, there is a critical difference: even…

Kinetic-transport equations that take into account the intra-cellular pathways are now considered as the correct description of bacterial chemotaxis by run and tumble. Recent mathematical studies have shown their interest and their…

To survive in ever-changing environments, living organisms need to continuously combine the ongoing external inputs they receive, representing present conditions, with their dynamical internal state, which includes influences of past…

Mathematical models have been widely used to describe the collective movement of bacteria by chemotaxis. In particular, bacterial concentration waves traveling in a narrow channel have been experimentally observed and can be precisely…

Self-generated gradients (SGG) provide robust steering cues that guide cells in their long-distance expeditions during embryonic development, immune response, and cancer metastasis. Cells generate their own local, dynamic gradients by…

We study the chemotaxis of a population of genetically identical swimming bacteria undergoing run and tumble dynamics driven by stochastic switching between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation of the flagellar rotary system.…

Chemotaxis and haptotaxis have been a main theme in the macroscopic study of bacterial and cellular motility. In this work we investigate the influence these processes have on the shape and motility of fast migrating cells. We note that…

Memories are stored, retained, and recollected through complex, coupled processes operating on multiple timescales. To understand the computational principles behind these intricate networks of interactions we construct a broad class of…

Living cells can leverage correlations in environmental fluctuations to predict the future environment and mount a response ahead of time. To this end, cells need to encode the past signal into the output of the intracellular network from…

Background: Living cells of many types need to move in response to external stimuli in order to accomplish their functional tasks; these tasks range from wound healing to immune response to fertilization. While the directional motion is…