Related papers: Contact-mediated signaling enables disorder-driven…

We provide detailed comparisons between experimental findings and numerical simulations of large cooperatively interacting, spatially disordered metamaterial arrays, consisting of asymmetrically split rings. Simulation methods fully…

Mounting evidence shows that oscillatory activity is widespread in cell signaling. Here we review some of this recent evidence, focusing on both the molecular mechanisms that potentially underlie such dynamical behavior, and the potential…

Collective cell responses to exogenous cues depend on cell-cell interactions. In principle, these can result in enhanced sensitivity to weak and noisy stimuli. However, this has not yet been shown experimentally, and, little is known about…

Recent advances in high-resolution experimental methods have highlighted the significance of cell signal pathway crosstalk and localised signalling activity in the development and disease of numerous biological systems. The investigation of…

Signaling pathways serve to communicate information about extracellular conditions into the cell, to both the nucleus and cytoplasmic processes to control cell responses. Genetic mutations in signaling network components are frequently…

Cell shape is determined by a balance of intrinsic properties of the cell as well as its mechanochemical environment. Inhomogeneous shape changes underly many morphogenetic events and involve spatial gradients in active cellular forces…

Ordered polarity alignment of a cell population plays a vital role in biology, such as in hair follicle alignment and asymmetric cell division. Here, we propose a theoretical framework for the understanding of generic dynamical properties…

Contact inhibition refers to a reduction in the rate of cell migration and/or cell proliferation in regions of high cell density. Under normal conditions contact inhibition is associated with the proper functioning tissues, whereas abnormal…

In this letter we present the results of a simple model for intercellular communication via calcium oscillations, motivated in part by a recent experimental study. The model describes two cells (a "donor" and "sensor") whose intracellular…

We develop a general theory for discontinuous non-equilibrium phase transitions into an absorbing state in the presence of temporal disorder. We focus in two paradigmatic models for discontinuous transitions: the quadratic contact process…

Phase transitions in disordered systems can be smeared if rare spatial regions develop true static order while the bulk system is in the disordered phase. Here, we study the effects of spatial disorder correlations on such smeared phase…

Interactions between neighboring cells are essential for generating or refining patterns in a number of biological systems. We propose a discrete filtering approach to predict how networks of cells modulate spatially varying input signals…

Collective cell migration plays an essential role in various biological processes, such as development or cancer proliferation. While cell-cell interactions are clearly key determinants of collective cell migration -- in addition to…

Collective behavior is studied in globally coupled maps with distributed nonlinearity. It is shown that the heterogeneity enhances regularity in the collective dynamics. Low-dimensional quasiperiodic motion is often found for the…

There are numerous scenarios in which populations of cells migrate in crowded environments. Typical examples include wound healing, cancer growth and embryo development. In these crowded environments cells are able to interact with each…

Many biological, physical, and social interactions have a particular dependence on where they take place. In living cells, protein movement between the nucleus and cytoplasm affects cellular response (i.e., proteins must be present in the…

A large number of eukaryotic cells are able to directly detect external chemical gradients with great accuracy and the ultimate limit to their sensitivity has been a topic of debate for many years. Previous work has been done to understand…

Coherent oscillatory activity can arise spontaneously as a result of increased coupling in a system of excitable and passive cells, each being quiescent in isolation. This can potentially explain the appearance of spontaneous rhythmic…

Biopolymers are characterized by heterogeneous interactions, and usually perform their biological tasks forming contacts within domains of limited size. Combining polymer theory with a replica approach, we study the scaling properties of…

Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…