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The millimeter-long soil-dwelling nematode {\it C. elegans} propels itself by producing undulations that propagate along its body and turns by assuming highly curved shapes. According to our recent study [PLoS ONE \textbf{7}, e40121 (2012)]…
Efficient sorting of target cells is crucial for advancing cellular research in biology and medical diagnostics. Inertial microfluidics, an emerging technology, offers a promising approach for label-free particle sorting with high…
Single-cell lineage tracking strategies enabled by recent experimental technologies have produced significant insights into cell fate decisions, but lack the quantitative framework necessary for rigorous statistical analysis of mechanistic…
A rigorous methodology is proposed to study cell division data consisting in several observed genealogical trees of possibly different shapes. The procedure takes into account missing observations, data from different trees, as well as the…
During development, highly ordered structures emerge as cells collectively coordinate with each other. While recent advances have clarified how individual cells process and respond to external signals, understanding collective cellular…
In preimplantation mammalian embryos, the second cell fate decision introduces spatial patterns of embryonic and extra-embryonic precursor cells. The transcription factors NANOG and GATA6 are the earliest markers for the two cell types and…
We experimentally studied the locomotion of the nematode C. elegans in both fluidic and granular media. In this fluid dynamics video, we show the motility gaits of the nematode in these two environments. The motility of the nematode C.…
We study the asymptotic behaviors of stochastic cell fate decision between proliferation and differentiation. We propose a model of a self-replicating Langevin system, where cells choose their fate (i.e. proliferation or differentiation)…
A theoretical model is presented for early evolutionary cell sorting within cellular aggregates. The model involves an energy-saving mechanism and principles of collective self-organization analogous to those observed in bicycle pelotons…
Embryonic development involves pattern formation characterized by the emergence of spatially localized domains characterized by distinct cell fates resulting from differential gene expression. The boundaries demarcating these domains are…
How do we capture the breadth of behavior in animal movement, from rapid body twitches to aging? Using high-resolution videos of the nematode worm $C. elegans$, we show that a single dynamics connects posture-scale fluctuations with…
Nematodes have evolved to swim in highly viscous environments. Artificial mechanisms that mimic the locomotory functions of nematodes can be efficient viscous pumps. We experimentally simulate the motion of the head segment of…
Theories to explain the prevalence of sex and recombination have long been a central theme of evolutionary biology. Yet despite decades of attention dedicated to the evolution of sex and recombination, the widespread pattern of…
We analyse a series of bacterial growth models with in-built inter-individual variation in rates of cell division. We show that this variation leads to reduced population growth in favorable regimes and reduced population killing in…
Stem cells, through their ability to produce daughter stem cells and differentiate into specialized cells, are essential in the growth, maintenance, and repair of biological tissues. Understanding the dynamics of cell populations in the…
One of the biggest challenges in biology is to understand how activity at the cellular level of neurons, as a result of their mutual interactions, leads to the observed behavior of an organism responding to a variety of environmental…
Undulatory swimming is a widespread propulsion strategy adopted by many small-scale organisms including various single-cell eukaryotes and nematodes. In this work, we report a comprehensive study of undulatory locomotion of a finite…
Mechanical interactions among cells in a growing microbial colony can significantly influence the colony's spatial genetic structure and, thus, evolutionary outcomes such as the fates of rare mutations. Here, we computationally investigate…
Stem cells have the potential to produce lineages of non-stem cell populations (differentiated cells) via a ubiquitous hierarchal division scheme. Differentiation of a stem cell into (partially) differentiated cells can happen either…
The problem of unicellular-multicellular transition is one of the main issues that is discussing in evolutionary biology. In [1] the fitness of a colony of cells is considered in terms of its two basic components, viability and fecundity.…