Related papers: Optimal intercellular competition in senescence an…
Normal life activities between cells rely crucially on the homeostasis of the cellular microenvironment, but aging and cancer will upset this balance. In this paper, we introduce the microenvironmental feedback mechanism to the growth…
Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will…
The network concept is increasingly used for the description of complex systems. Here we summarize key aspects of the evolvability and robustness of the hierarchical network-set of macromolecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems. Listing…
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…
Cell competition in multicellular organisms has been shown to play a critical role during the development of organisms, cancer progression, and in the establishment and maintenance of tissue homeostasis. Various mechanisms of cell…
Cell competition is recognized to be instrumental to the dynamics and structure of the tumor-host interface in invasive cancers. In mild competition scenarios, the healthy tissue and cancer cells can coexist. When the competition is…
Advances in healthcare and in the quality of life significantly increase human life expectancy. With the ageing of populations, new un-faced challenges are brought to science. The human body is naturally selected to be well-functioning…
Cell competition is a quality control mechanism in tissues that results in the elimination of less fit cells. Over the past decade, the phenomenon of cell competition has been identified in many physiological and pathological contexts,…
Recent work draws attention to community-community encounters ("coalescence") as likely an important factor shaping natural ecosystems. This work builds on MacArthur's classic model of competitive coexistence to investigate such…
The construction of a network of cell-to-cell contacts makes it possible to characterize the patterns and spatial organisation of tissues. Such networks are highly dynamic, depending on the changes of the tissue architecture caused by cell…
We discuss the mathematical modelling of two of the main mechanisms which pushed forward the emergence of multicellularity: phenotype divergence in cell differentiation, and between-cell cooperation. In line with the atavistic theory of…
Although species longevity is subject to a diverse range of selective forces, the mortality curves of a wide variety of organisms are rather similar. We argue that aging and its universal characteristics may have evolved by means of a…
Cellular renewing active matter - assemblies of proliferating and apoptotic cells - underlies tissue homeostasis, morphogenesis, and clonal competition. Previous work in one-dimensional periodic systems identified a fitness advantage…
Aging is thought to be a consequence of intrinsic breakdowns in how genetic information is processed. But mounting experimental evidence suggests that aging can be slowed. To help resolve this mystery, I derive a mortality equation which…
The hypothesis that living systems can benefit from operating at the vicinity of critical points has gained momentum in recent years. Criticality may confer an optimal balance between exceedingly ordered and too noisy states. We here…
The interplay between energy efficiency and evolutionary mechanisms is addressed. One important question is how evolutionary mechanisms can select for the optimised usage of energy in situations where it does not lead to immediate…
The mortality rate of many complex multicellular organisms increase with age, which suggests that net aging damage is accumulative, despite remodeling processes. But how exactly do little mishaps in the cellular level accumulate and spread…
Cycling tissues such as the intestinal epithelium, germ line, and hair follicles, require a constant flux of differentiated cells. These tissues are maintained by a population of stem cells, which generate differentiated progenies and…
Relations among species in ecosystems can be represented by complex networks where both negative (competition) and positive (mutualism) interactions are concurrently present. Recently, it has been shown that many ecosystems can be cast into…
Stem cells maintain tissues by generating differentiated cell types while simultaneously self-renewing their own population. The mechanisms that allow stem cell populations to function collectively to control their density, maintain robust…