Related papers: E. coli chemotaxis is information-limited
It has recently been reported that bacteria, such as E.coli and P. putida, perform distinct modes of motion when placed in porous media as compared to dilute regions or free space. This has led us to suggest an efficient strategy for active…
Recent observations demonstrate that densely packed tissues exhibit features of glassy dynamics, such as caging behavior and dynamical heterogeneities, although it has remained unclear how single-cell properties control this behavior. Here…
Collective motion of chemotactic bacteria as E. Coli relies, at the individual level, on a continuous reorientation by runs and tumbles. It has been established that the length of run is decided by a stiff response to a temporal sensingof…
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…
The near-surface swimming patterns of bacteria are strongly determined by the hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria and the surface, which trap bacteria in smooth circular trajectories that lead to inefficient surface exploration.…
The coordinated and efficient distribution of limited resources by individual decisions is a fundamental, unsolved problem. When individuals compete for road capacities, time, space, money, goods, etc., they normally make decisions based on…
In proliferating cell populations, adaptive changes to biochemical reactions can change a cell's division time, which in turn can change the population size. However, biochemical reactions are subject to noise, and therefore the conditions…
Mechanical stresses stemming from environmental factors are a key determinant of cellular behavior and physiology. Yet, the role of self-induced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial colonies has remained largely unexplored. Here, we…
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…
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…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
Cells use signalling pathways as windows into the environment to gather information, transduce it into their interior, and use it to drive behaviours. MAPK (ERK) is a highly conserved signalling pathway in eukaryotes, directing multiple…
To thrive in dynamic environments, animals must be capable of rapidly and flexibly adapting behavioral responses to a changing context and internal state. Examples of behavioral flexibility include faster stimulus responses when attentive…
Many processes in biology involve both reactions and chemotaxis. However, to the best of our knowledge, the question of interaction between chemotaxis and reactions has not yet been addressed either analytically or numerically. We consider…
Sensory adaptation enables organisms to adjust their perception in a changing environment. A paradigm is bacterial chemotaxis, where the output activity of chemoreceptors is adapted to different baseline concentrations via receptor…
The function of the organism hinges on the performance of its information-processing networks, which convey information via molecular recognition. Many paths within these networks utilize molecular codebooks, such as the genetic code, to…
Collective motion provides a spectacular example of self-organization in Nature. Visual information plays a crucial role among various types of information in determining interactions. Recently, experiments have revealed that organisms such…
Sedimentation in active fluids has come into focus due to the ubiquity of swimming micro-organisms in natural and industrial processes. Here, we investigate sedimentation dynamics of passive particles in a fluid as a function of bacteria E.…
Marine microorganisms often reach high swimming speeds, either to take advantage of evanescent nutrient patches or to beat Brownian forces. Since this implies that a sizable part of their energetic budget must be allocated to motion, it is…
The heterogeneity of reaction fluxes present in a metabolic network within a single flux state can be exploited to construct the so-called backbone as a reduced version of metabolism. The backbone maintains all significant fluxes producing…