Related papers: Nonequilibrium Theory of Epigenomic Microphase Sep…
The genetic instructions stored in the genome require an additional layer of information to robustly determine cell fate. This additional regulation is provided by the interplay between chromosome-patterning biochemical ("epigenetic") marks…
Cells often exhibit different and stable phenotypes from the same DNA sequence. Robustness and plasticity of such cellular states are controlled by diverse transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms, among them the modification of…
Epigenetics is a driving force of important and ubiquitous phenomena in nature such as cell differentiation or even metamorphosis. Oppositely to its widespread role, understanding the biophysical principles that allow epigenetics to control…
In higher organisms, all cells share the same genome, but every cell expresses only a limited and specific set of genes that defines the cell type. During cell division, not only the genome, but also the cell type is inherited by the…
Essential life processes take place across multiple space and time scales in living organisms but understanding their mechanistic interactions remains an ongoing challenge. Advanced multiscale modeling techniques are providing new…
Life is characterized by a myriad of complex dynamic processes allowing organisms to grow, reproduce, and evolve. Physical approaches for describing systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium have been increasingly applied to living systems,…
Several orders of magnitude typically separate the contour length of eukaryotic chromosomes and the size of the nucleus where they are confined. The ensuing topological constraints can slow down the relaxation dynamics of genomic filaments…
Epigenetic Tracking is a mathematical model of biological cells, originally conceived to study embryonic development. Computer simulations proved the capacity of the model to generate complex 3-dimensional cellular structures, and the…
Maintaining tissue homeostasis requires appropriate regulation of stem cell differentiation. The Waddington landscape posits that gene circuits in a cell form a potential landscape of different cell types, wherein cells follow attractors of…
Phase separation routinely occurs in both living and synthetic systems. These phases are often complex and distinguished by features including crystallinity, nematic order, and a host of other nonconserved order parameters. For systems at…
In recent times whole-genome gene expression analysis has turned out to be a highly important tool to study the coordinated function of a very large number of genes within their corresponding cellular environment, especially in relation to…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Genome organization in eukaryotes during interphase stems from the delicate balance between non-random correlations present in the DNA polynucleotide linear sequence and the physico/chemical reactions which shape continuously the form and…
The mechanism through which cells determine their fate is intimately related to the spreading of certain biochemical (so-called epigenetic) marks along their genome. The mechanisms behind mark spreading and maintenance are not yet fully…
We provide a non-equilibrium thermodynamic description of the life-cycle of a droplet based, chemically feasible, system of protocells. By coupling the protocells metabolic kinetics with its thermodynamics, we demonstrate how the system can…
The phenotypic equilibrium, i.e. heterogeneous population of cancer cells tending to a fixed equilibrium of phenotypic proportions, has received much attention in cancer biology very recently. In previous literature, some theoretical models…
We propose a physical model for developmental process at cellular level to discuss the mechanism of epigenetic landscape. In our simplified model, a minimal model, the network of the interaction among cells generates the landscape…
Epigenetics plays a key role in cellular differentiation and maintaining cell identity, enabling cells to regulate their genetic activity without altering the DNA sequence. Epigenetic regulation occurs within the context of hierarchically…
The formation of polarized signaling domains on cell membranes is a fundamental example of biological pattern formation. While such patterns resemble structures from equilibrium phase separation, they are intrinsically non-equilibrium,…
Cells use genetic switches to shift between alternate stable gene expression states, e.g., to adapt to new environments or to follow a developmental pathway. Conceptually, these stable phenotypes can be considered as attractive states on an…