Related papers: Evolutionary advantage of cell size control
For various species of biological cells, experimental observations indicate the existence of universal distributions of the cellular size, scaling relations between the cell-size moments and simple rules for the cell-size control. We…
Cells employ control strategies to maintain a stable size. Dividing at a target size (the `sizer' strategy) is thought to produce the tightest size distribution. However, this result follows from phenomenological models that ignore the…
Cells control their size to cope with noise during growth and division. Eukaryotic cells exhibiting "sizer" control (targeting a specific size before dividing) may rely on molecular concentration thresholds, but simple implementations of…
Living cells maintain size homeostasis by actively compensating for size fluctuations. Here, we present two stochastic maps that unify phenomenological models by integrating fluctuating single-cell growth rates and size-dependent noise…
Single-cell experiments revealed substantial variability in generation times, growth rates but also in birth and division sizes between genetically identical cells. Understanding how these fluctuations determine the fitness of the…
Cell size control is crucial for maintaining cellular function and homeostasis. In this study, we develop a first-order partial differential equation model to examine the effects of three key size control mechanisms: the sizer, timer, and…
Selective control in a population is the ability to control a member of the population while leaving the other members relatively unaffected. The concept of selective control is developed using cell death or apoptosis in heterogeneous cell…
Cell size is a fundamental determinant of cellular physiology, influencing processes such as growth, division, and function. In this study, we develop a segmented mathematical framework to investigate how different control mechanisms…
Cell lineage statistics is a powerful tool for inferring cellular parameters, such as division rate, death rate or the population growth rate. Yet, in practice such an analysis suffers from a basic problem: how should we treat incomplete…
Risk spreading in bacterial populations is generally regarded as a strategy to maximize survival. Here, we study its role during range expansion of a genetically diverse population where growth and motility are two alternative traits. We…
We study a stochastic spatial model of biological competition in which two species have the same birth and death rates, but different diffusion constants. In the absence of this difference, the model can be considered as an off-lattice…
Classic models of cell size control consider cells divide while reaching a threshold, e.g. size, age, or size extension. The molecular basis of the threshold involves multiple layers of regulation as well as gene noises. In this work, we…
A ubiquitous feature of living cells is their growth over time followed by division into daughter cells. How isogenic cell populations maintain size homeostasis, i.e., a narrow distribution of cell size, is an intriguing fundamental…
In a geographically distributed population, assortative clustering plays an important role in evolution by modifying local environments. To examine its effects in a linear habitat, we consider a one-dimensional grid of cells, where each…
Establishing a quantitative connection between the population growth rate and the generation times of single cells is a prerequisite for understanding evolutionary dynamics of microbes. However, existing theories fail to account for the…
In biology and ecology, individuals or communities of individuals living in unpredictable environments often alternate between different evolutionary strategies to spread and reduce risks. Such behavior is commonly referred to as…
Standard evolutionary theories of aging and mortality, implicitly based on assumptions of spatial averaging, hold that natural selection cannot favor shorter lifespan without direct compensating benefit to individual reproductive success.…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
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…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…