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To model the morphogenesis of rod-shaped bacterial micro-colony, several individual-based models have been proposed in the biophysical literature. When studying the shape of micro-colonies, most models present interaction forces such as…
Quantitative single cell measurements have shown that cell cycle duration (the time between cell divisions) for diverse cell types is a noisy variable. The underlying distribution is mean scalable with a universal shape for many cell types…
The identification of cellular objectives is one of the central topics in the research of microbial metabolic networks. In particular, the information about a cellular objective is needed in flux balance analysis which is a commonly used…
Populations evolving in fluctuating environments face the fundamental challenge of balancing adaptation to current conditions against preparation for uncertain futures. Here, we study microbial evolution in partially predictable…
Droplet formation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatiotemporal organisation of biomolecules in cells. However, classical descriptions of droplet dynamics based on passive liquid-liquid phase separation cannot capture the…
Living systems continuously transform matter and energy through the chemical processes that constitute their metabolism. The overall metabolic rate of an organism correlates positively with its body mass, however both the exact scaling…
The computational modeling of genetic regulatory networks is now common place, either by fitting a system to experimental data or by exploring the behaviour of abstract systems with the aim of identifying underlying principles. This paper…
Two basic features of assemblages of unicellular plankton: (1) their high biodiversity and (2) the power-law structure of their abundance, can be explained by an allometric scaling of cell growth and mortality with respect to cell size. To…
The relationship between the regulatory design and the functionality of molecular networks is a key issue in biology. Modules and motifs have been associated to various cellular processes, thereby providing anecdotal evidence for…
Communication and coordination play a major role in the ability of bacterial cells to adapt to ever changing environments and conditions. Recent work has shown that such coordination underlies several aspects of bacterial responses…
Antimicrobial protocols - using substances such as antibiotics or disinfectants - remain the preferred option for preventing the spread of pathogenic bacteria. However, bacteria can develop mechanisms to reduce their antimicrobial…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
Bacterial swarming is a rapid mass-migration, in which thousands of cells spread collectively to colonize a surface. Physically, swarming is a natural example of active particles that use energy to generate motion. Accordingly,…
In Dictyostelium discoideum the proportion of cell types is known to be actively regulated, recovering, for example, after the removal of a given cell type. However, we have recently shown that regulation is intrinsically imprecise: it…
Predicting cellular metabolic states is a central problem in biophysics. Conventional approaches, however, sensitively depend on the microscopic details of individual metabolic systems. In this Letter, we derived a universal linear…
Most organisms grow according to simple laws, which in principle can be derived from energy conservation and scaling arguments, critically dependent on the relation between the metabolic rate B of energy flow and the organism mass m.…
Bistability is considered wide-spread among bacteria and eukaryotic cells, useful e.g. for enzyme induction, bet hedging, and epigenetic switching. However, this phenomenon has mostly been described with deterministic dynamic or well-mixed…
Bacteria build multicellular communities termed biofilms, which are often encased in a self-secreted extracellular matrix that gives the community mechanical strength and protection against harsh chemicals. How bacteria assemble distinct…
Metabolism and evolution are closely connected: if a mutation incurs extra energetic costs for an organism, there is a baseline selective disadvantage that may or may not be compensated for by other adaptive effects. A long-standing, but to…
We revisit the modeling of the diauxic growth of a pure microorganism on two distinct sugars which was first described by Monod. Most available models are deterministic and make the assumption that all cells of the microbial ecosystem…