Related papers: Population genetics in microchannels
We propose a general model to study the interplay between spatial dispersal and environment spatiotemporal fluctuations in metapopulation dynamics. An ecological landscape of favorable patches is generated like a L\'{e}vy dust, which allows…
Dispersal is an important strategy that allows organisms to locate and exploit favorable habitats. The question arises: given competition in a spatially heterogeneous landscape, what is the optimal rate of dispersal? Continuous population…
Biological and social systems are structured at multiple scales, and the incentives of individuals who interact in a group may diverge from the collective incentive of the group as a whole. Mechanisms to resolve this tension are responsible…
Synergistic and antagonistic interactions in multi-species populations - such as resource sharing and competition - result in remarkably diverse behaviors in populations of interacting cells, such as in soil or human microbiomes, or clonal…
Environmental heterogeneity can drive genetic heterogeneity in expanding populations; mutant strains may emerge that trade overall growth rate for an improved ability to survive in patches that are hostile to the wild type. This…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
The aim of this work is twofold. First, we survey the techniques developed in (Perthame, Zubelli, 2007) and (Doumic, Perthame, Zubelli, 2008) to reconstruct the division (birth) rate from the cell volume distribution data in certain…
Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…
The ubiquitous existence of microbial communities marks the importance of understanding how species interact within the community to coexist and their spatial organization. We study a two-species mutualistic cross-feeding model through a…
We study different types of microswimmers moving in channels with varying cross section and thereby interacting hydrodynamically with the channel walls. Starting from the Smoluchowski equation for a dilute suspension, for which interactions…
We study the growth of a population of bacteria in a dynamical hostile environment corresponding to the immune system of the colonised organism. The immune cells evolve as subcritical open clusters of oriented percolation and are…
We investigate the evolution of populations of random Boolean networks under selection for robustness of the dynamics with respect to the perturbation of the state of a node. The fitness landscape contains a huge plateau of maximum fitness…
In nature, microorganisms must often cope with hostile environmental conditions. To do so they have developed sophisticated cooperative behavior and intricate communication capabilities, such as: direct cell-cell physical interactions via…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
Rare evolutionary events, such as the rise to prominence of deleterious mutations, can have drastic impacts on the evolution of growing populations. Heterogeneous environments may reduce the influence of selection on evolutionary outcomes…
We study the spatial patterns formed by a system of interacting particles where the mobility of any individual is determined by the population crowding at two different spatial scales. In this way we model the behavior of some biological…
The mean size of exponentially dividing E. coli cells cultured in different nutrient conditions is known to depend on the mean growth rate only. However, the joint fluctuations relating cell size, doubling time and individual growth rate…
To provide insight into the basic properties of emerging structures when bacteria or other microorganisms conquer surfaces, it is crucial to analyze their growth behavior during the formation of thin films. In this regard, many theoretical…
Population structure can be modelled by evolutionary graphs, which can have a substantial, but very subtle influence on the fate of the arising mutants. Individuals are located on the nodes of these graphs, competing with each other to…
Dynamical properties of the transcriptional regulatory network of {\it Escherichia coli} and {\it Saccharomyces cerevisiae} are studied within the framework of random Boolean functions. The dynamical response of these networks to a single…