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Metagenomics has revealed hundreds of bacterial species in almost all microbiota. In a few well-studied cases, bacterial communities have been observed to coordinate their metabolic fluxes. In principle, bacteria can divide tasks to reap…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…
Diffusion rates through a membrane can be asymmetric, if the diffusing particles are spatially extended and the pores in the membrane have asymmetric structure. This phenomenon is demonstrated here via a deterministic simulation of a…
The energy dissipated by a living organism is commonly identified with heat generation. However, as cells exchange metabolites with their environment they also dissipate energy in the form of chemical entropy. How dissipation is distributed…
The rank ordered distribution of the codon usage frequencies for 123 bacteriae is best fitted by a three parameters function that is the sum of a constant, an exponential and a linear term in the rank n. The parameters depend (two…
Features of the CRISPR-Cas system, in which bacteria integrate small segments of phage genome (spacers) into their DNA to neutralize future attacks, suggest that its effect is not limited to individual bacteria but may control the fate and…
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…
The study of common heritability, or co-heritability, among multiple traits has been widely established in quantitative and molecular genetics. However, in bacteria, genome-based estimation of heritability has only been considered very…
Many bacterial species exchange signaling molecules to coordinate population-wide responses. For this process known as quorum sensing the concentration of the respective molecules is crucial. Here we consider the interaction between…
Hi-C experiments are used to infer the contact probabilities between loci separated by varying genome lengths. Contact probability should decrease as the spatial distance between two loci increases. However, studies comparing Hi-C and FISH…
The development of multicellular organisms relies on the precise coordination of molecular events across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Understanding how information flows from molecular interactions to cellular processes and tissue…
Epistasis refers to the phenomenon in which phenotypic consequences caused by mutation of one gene depend on one or more mutations at another gene. Epistasis is critical for understanding many genetic and evolutionary processes, including…
The infection pathway of virus in cytoplasm of a living cell is studied from the viewpoint of diffusion theory. The cytoplasm plays a role of a medium for stochastic motion of the virus contained in the endosome as well as the free virus.…
Communication between cells is realized by exchange of biochemical substances. Due to internal organization of living systems and variability of external parameters, the exchange is heavily influenced by perturbations of various parameters…
Cells adapt to different conditions by altering a vast number of components, which is measurable using transcriptome analysis. Given that a cell undergoing steady growth is constrained to sustain each of its internal components, the…
Motivated by recent experiments probing shape, size and dynamics of bacterial chromosomes in growing cells, we consider a polymer model consisting of a circular backbone to which side-loops are attached, confined to a cylindrical cell. Such…
Dynamical processes, such as the diffusion of knowledge, opinions, pathogens, "fake news", innovation, and others, are highly dependent on the structure of the social network on which they occur. However, questions on why most social…
Chromosomal crossovers play a crucial role in meiotic cell division, as they ensure proper chromosome segregation and increase genetic variability. Experiments have consistently revealed two key observations across species: (i) the number…
The theory of lithopanspermia proposes the natural exchange of organisms between solar system bodies through meteorites. The focus of this theory comprises three distinct stages: planetary ejection, interplanetary transit and planetary…
The incubation period of a disease is the time between an initiating pathologic event and the onset of symptoms. For typhoid fever, polio, measles, leukemia and many other diseases, the incubation period is highly variable. Some affected…