Related papers: Chemotaxis in uncertain environments: hedging bets…
Eukaryotic cells generally sense chemical gradients using the binding of chemical ligands to membrane receptors. In order to perform chemotaxis effectively in different environments, cells need to adapt to different concentrations. We…
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…
Biological cells are often found to sense their chemical environment near the single-molecule detection limit. Surprisingly, this precision is higher than simple estimates of the fundamental physical limit, hinting towards active sensing…
Most sensory cells use cross-membrane chemoreceptors to detect chemical signals in the environment. The biochemical properties and spatial organization of chemoreceptors play important roles in achieving and maintaining sensitivity and…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to sense chemical gradients by directly measuring spatial concentration differences. The precision of such gradient sensing is limited by fluctuations in the binding of diffusing particles to specific…
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…
Living cells sense noisy biochemical signals crucial for survival, yet models incorporating intracellular signaling are limited. This study examines how cells sense chemotactic concentrations through phosphorylation readouts in Ca2+…
Chemotactic cells of eukaryotic organisms are able to accurately sense shallow chemical concentration gradients using cell-surface receptors. This sensing ability is remarkable as cells must be able to spatially resolve small fractional…
Accurate gradient sensing is crucial for efficient chemotaxis in noisy environments, but the relationship between cell shape deformations and sensing accuracy is not well understood. Using a theoretical framework based on maximum likelihood…
Bacterial chemotaxis systems are as diverse as the environments that bacteria inhabit, but how much environmental variation can cells tolerate with a single system? Diversification of a single chemotaxis system could serve as an…
Cells use surface receptors to estimate the concentration of external ligands. Limits on the accuracy of such estimations have been well studied for pairs of ligand and receptor species. However, the environment typically contains many…
Collective cell migration in response to a chemical cue occurs in many biological processes such as morphogenesis and cancer metastasis. Clusters of migratory cells in these systems are capable of responding to gradients of less than 1%…
Organisms that grow and survive in uncertain environments may need to change their physiological state as the environment changes. When the environment is uncertain, one strategy known as bet-hedging is to make these changes randomly and…
Eukaryotic cells sense chemical gradients to decide where and when to move. Clusters of cells can sense gradients more accurately than individual cells by integrating measurements of the concentration made across the cluster. Is this…
Chemotaxis is the process by which cells behave in a way that follows the chemical gradient. Applications to bacteria growth, tissue inflammation, and vascular tumors provide a focus on optimization strategies. Experiments can characterize…
In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…
Eukaryotic cells respond to a chemoattractant gradient by forming intracellular gradients of signaling molecules that reflect the extracellular chemical gradient - an ability called directional sensing. Quantitative experiments have…
Eukaryotic cells perform chemotaxis by determining the direction of chemical gradients based on stochastic sensing of concentrations at the cell surface. To examine the efficiency of this process, previous studies have investigated the…
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.…
In many sensory systems, transmembrane receptors are spatially organized in large clusters. Such arrangement may facilitate signal amplification and the integration of multiple stimuli. However, this organization likely also affects the…