Related papers: Resource allocation determines alternate cell fate…
The work is devoted to the analysis of cell population dynamics where cells make a choice between differentiation and apoptosis. This choice is based on the values of intracellular proteins whose concentrations are described by a system of…
Cell functional diversity is a significant determinant on how biological processes unfold. Most accounts of diversity involve a search for sequence or expression differences. Perhaps there are more subtle mechanisms at work. Using the…
Maintaining tissue homeostasis requires appropriate regulation of stem cell differentiation. The Waddington landscape posits that gene circuits in a cell form a potential landscape of different cell types, wherein cells follow attractors of…
In real-life complex systems, individuals often encounter multiple social dilemmas that cannot be effectively captured using a single-game model. Furthermore, the environment and limited resources both play a crucial role in shaping…
Pluripotent embryonic stem cells are of paramount importance for biomedical research thanks to their innate ability for self-renewal and differentiation into all major cell lines. The fateful decision to exit or remain in the pluripotent…
Cellular decision making is based on regulatory circuits that associate signal thresholds to specific physiological actions. This transmission of information is subjected to molecular noise what can decrease its fidelity. Here, we show…
Biological information processing manifests a huge variety in its complexity and capability among different organisms, which presumably stems from the evolutionary optimization under limited computational resources. Starting from the…
Gene expression is a noisy process that leads to regime shift between alternative steady states among individual living cells, inducing phenotypic variability. The effects of white noise on the regime shift in bistable systems have been…
Environment plays a fundamental role in the competition for resources, and hence in the evolution of populations. Here, we study a well-mixed, finite population consisting of two strains competing for the limited resources provided by an…
Signal transduction within biological cells is governed by networks of interacting proteins. Communication between these proteins is mediated by signaling molecules which bind to receptors and induce stochastic transitions between different…
During development, spatio-temporal patterns ranging from checkerboard to engulfing occur with precise proportions of the respective cell fates. Key developmental regulators are intracellular transcriptional interactions and intercellular…
This paper develops a quasispecies model where cells can adopt a two-cell survival strategy. Within this strategy, pairs of cells join together, at which point one of the cells sacrifices its own replicative ability for the sake of the…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
The goal of this article is to contribute towards the conceptual and quantitative understanding of the evolutionary benefits for (microbial) populations to maintain a seed bank (consisting of dormant individuals) when facing fluctuating…
Cell-to-cell variability is inherent to numerous biological processes, including cell migration. Quantifying and characterizing the variability of migrating cells is challenging, as it requires monitoring many cells for long time windows…
In this paper, we study through mathematical modelling the combined effect of transcriptional and translational regulation by proteins and small noncoding RNAs (sRNA) in a genetic feedback motif that has an important role in the survival of…
Spontaneous switching events in most characterized genetic switches are rare, resulting in extremely stable epigenetic properties. We show how simple arguments lead to theories of the rate of such events much like the absolute rate theory…
Riboswitches, RNA elements found in the untranslated region, regulate gene expression by binding to target metaboloites with exquisite specificity. Binding of metabolites to the conserved aptamer domain allosterically alters the…
We study the emergence of cell differentiation under the assumption of the existence of a given number of tradeoffs between genes encoding different functions. In the model the viability of colonies is determined by the capability of their…
Stochastic phenotype switching has been suggested to play a beneficial role in microbial populations by leading to the division of labour among cells, or ensuring that at least some of the population survives an unexpected change in…