Related papers: Growth-laws and invariants from ribosome biogenesi…
Despite growth being fundamental to all aspects of cell biology, we do not yet know its organizing principles in eukaryotic cells. Classic models derived from the bacteria E. coli posit that protein-synthesis rates are set by mass-action…
To maintain a constant cell size, dividing cells have to coordinate cell cycle events with cell growth. This coordination has for long been supposed to rely on the existence of size thresholds determining cell cycle progression [1]. In…
Resource Balance Analysis (RBA) is a framework for predicting steady-state cellular growth under resource constraints. However, classical RBA formulations are static and do not capture the dynamic regulation of biosynthetic resources or…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
A central and long-standing issue in evolutionary theory is the origin of the biological variation upon which natural selection acts1. Some hypotheses suggest that evolutionary change represents an adaptation to the surrounding environment…
The prevalence of multicellular organisms is due in part to their ability to form complex structures. How cells pack in these structures is a fundamental biophysical issue, underlying their functional properties. However, much remains…
The genetic material of a eukaryotic cell comprises both nuclear DNA (ncDNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). These differ markedly in several aspects but nevertheless must encode proteins that are compatible with one another. Here we…
Gene networks exhibiting oscillatory dynamics are widespread in biology. The minimal regulatory designs giving rise to oscillations have been implemented synthetically and studied by mathematical modeling. However, most of the available…
A general theory of thermodynamically consistent biomechanical--biochemical growth in a body, considering mass addition in the bulk and at an incoherent interface, is developed. The incoherency arises due to incompatibility of growth and…
Bacteria often form surface-bound communities, embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix, called biofilms. Quantitative studies of their growth have typically focused on unconfined expansion above solid or semi-solid surfaces,…
Genome length varies widely among organisms, from compact genomes of prokaryotes to vast and complex genomes of eukaryotes. In this study, we theoretically identify the evolutionary pressures that may have driven this divergence in genome…
We introduce a formalism for the geometry of eukaryotic cells and organisms.Cells are taken to be star-convex with good biological reason. This allows for a convenient description of their extent in space as well as all manner of cell…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Natively unfolded proteins exist as an ensemble of flexible conformations lacking a well defined tertiary structure along a large portion of their polypeptide chain. Despite the absence of a stable configuration, they are involved in…
Bacterial growth and division generally occur by the process known as binary fission, in which the cells grow polarly until they divide into two daughter cells. Although this process is affected by factors that introduce stochastic…
Models of transcriptional regulation that assume equilibrium binding of transcription factors have been very successful at predicting gene expression from sequence in bacteria. However, analogous equilibrium models do not perform as well in…
Bacteria are highly adaptive microorganisms that thrive in a wide range of growth conditions via changes in cell morphologies and macromolecular composition. How bacterial morphologies are regulated in diverse environmental conditions is a…
All living cells interact dynamically with a constantly changing world. Eukaryotes in particular, evolved radically new ways to sense and react to their environment. These advances enabled new and more complex forms of cellular behavior in…
The evolutionary transition to multicellularity transformed life on earth, allowing for the evolution of large, complex organisms. While multicellularity can be strongly advantageous, its earliest stages bring unique physical challenges.…