Related papers: Tradeoffs in concentration sensing in dynamic envi…
Across diverse biological systems -- ranging from neural networks to intracellular signaling and genetic regulatory networks -- the information about changes in the environment is frequently encoded in the full temporal dynamics of the…
In many natural synchronization phenomena, communication between individual elements occurs not directly, but rather through the environment. One of these instances is bacterial quorum sensing, where bacteria release signaling molecules in…
In response to a concentration gradient of nutrient, E. coli bacterium modulates the rotational bias of flagellar motors which control its run-and-tumble motion, to migrate towards regions of high nutrient concentration. Presence of…
A large number of biological systems - from bacteria to sheep - can be described as ensembles of self-propelled agents (active particles) with a complex internal dynamic that controls the agent's behavior: resting, moving slow, moving fast,…
Stochasticity (or noise) at cellular and molecular levels has been observed extensively as a universal feature for living systems. However, how living systems deal with noise while performing desirable biological functions remains a major…
In order to transmit biochemical signals, biological regulatory systems dissipate energy with concomitant entropy production. Additionally, signaling often takes place in challenging environmental conditions. In a simple model regulatory…
We investigate the competition dynamics of two microbial or viral strains that live in an environment that switches periodically between two states. One of the strains is adapted to the long-term environment, but pays a short-term cost,…
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…
We study the problem of tracking an object moving through a network of wireless sensors. In order to conserve energy, the sensors may be put into a sleep mode with a timer that determines their sleep duration. It is assumed that an asleep…
The precision of concentration sensing is improved when cells communicate. Here we derive the physical limits to concentration sensing for cells that communicate over short distances by directly exchanging small molecules (juxtacrine…
Changes in a cell's external or internal conditions are usually reflected in the concentrations of the relevant transcription factors. These proteins in turn modulate the expression levels of the genes under their control and sometimes need…
Randomness is an unavoidable feature of the intracellular environment due to chemical reactants being present in low copy number. That phenomenon, predicted by Delbr\"uck long ago \cite{delbruck40}, has been detected in both prokaryotic…
Dynamic benchmarks interweave model fitting and data collection in an attempt to mitigate the limitations of static benchmarks. In contrast to an extensive theoretical and empirical study of the static setting, the dynamic counterpart lags…
Neurons in the central nervous system are affected by complex and noisy signals due to fluctuations in their cellular environment and in the inputs they receive from many other cells 1,2. Such noise usually increases the probability that a…
Multi-robot systems performing continuous tasks face a performance trade-off when interrupted by urgent, time-critical sub-tasks. We investigate this trade-off in a scenario where a team must balance area patrolling with locating an…
The paper addresses state estimation for clock synchronization in the presence of factors affecting the quality of synchronization. Examples are temperature variations and delay asymmetry. These working conditions make synchronization a…
The dynamics of quantum systems are unavoidably influenced by their environment and in turn observing a quantum system (probe) can allow one to measure its environment: Measurements and controlled manipulation of the probe such as dynamical…
Virtually every biological function emerges through the organization of molecules in time and space. Consequently, a major challenge in statistical physics is to uncover the universal principles governing macromolecular self-organization…
Spatial heterogeneity is a hallmark of living systems, even at the molecular scale in individual cells. A key example is the partitioning of membrane-bound proteins via lipid domain formation or cytoskeleton-induced corralling. Yet the…
To adapt their behaviour in changing environments, cells sense concentrations by binding external ligands to their receptors. However, incorrect ligands may bind nonspecifically to receptors, and when their concentration is large, this…