Related papers: Chemotaxing E. coli do not count single molecules

Understanding the organization of reaction fluxes in cellular metabolism from the stoichiometry and the topology of the underlying biochemical network is a central issue in systems biology. In this task, it is important to devise reasonable…

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…

Given the stochastic nature of gene expression, genetically identical cells exposed to the same environmental inputs will produce different outputs. This heterogeneity has been hypothesized to have consequences for how cells are able to…

In systems biology new ways are required to analyze the large amount of existing data on regulation of cellular processes. Recent work can be roughly classified into either dynamical models of well-described subsystems, or coarse-grained…

Chemotaxis plays a crucial role in a variety of processes in biology and ecology. Quite often it acts to improve efficiency of biological reactions; one example is the immune system signalling, where infected tissues release chemokines…

Living cells sense noisy biochemical signals crucial for survival, yet models incorporating intracellular signaling are limited. This study examines how cells sense chemotactic concentrations through phosphorylation readouts in Ca2+…

Bacteria are able to respond to environmental signals by changing their rules of movement. When we take into account chemical signals in the environment, this behaviour is often called chemotaxis. At the individual-level, chemotaxis…

Many eukaryotic cells chemotax, sensing and following chemical gradients. However, experiments have shown that even under conditions when single cells cannot chemotax, small clusters may still follow a gradient. This behavior has been…

We propose a new scheme to infer the metabolic fluxes of cell cultures in a chemostat. Our approach is based on the Maximum Entropy Principle and exploits the understanding of the chemostat dynamics and its connection with the actual…

When cells measure concentrations of chemical signals, they may average multiple measurements over time in order to reduce noise in their measurements. However, when cells are in a environment that changes over time, past measurements may…

The inherent stochasticity of cellular processes leads to significant cell-to-cell variation in protein abundance. Although this noise has already been characterized and modeled, its broader implications and significance remain unclear. In…

All cells respond to changes in both their internal milieu and the environment around them through the regulation of their genes. Despite decades of effort, there remain huge gaps in our knowledge of both the function of many genes (the…

Cells sense environmental signals and transmit information intracellularly through changes in the abundance of molecular components. Such molecular abundances can be measured in single cells and exhibit significant heterogeneity in clonal…

Many eukaryotic cells are able to perform directional mechanosensing by directly measuring minute spatial differences in the mechanical stress on their membranes. Here, we explore the limits of a single mechanosensitive channel activation…

Most of our understanding of bacterial chemotaxis comes from studies of Escherichia coli. However, recent evidence suggests significant departures from the E. coli paradigm in other bacterial species. This variation may stem from different…

The ubiquity of information transmission via molecular communication between cells is comprehensively documented on Earth; this phenomenon might even have played a vital role in the origin(s) and early evolution of life. Motivated by these…

Biological sensory systems react to changes in their surroundings. They are characterized by fast response and slow adaptation to varying environmental cues. Insofar as sensory adaptive systems map environmental changes to changes of their…

Colonies of bacteria grown on thin agar plate exhibit fractal patterns as a result of adaptation to their environments. The bacterial colony pattern formation is regulated crucially by chemotaxis, the movement of cells along a chemical…

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…

For navigation, microscopic agents such as biological cells rely on noisy sensory input. In cells performing chemotaxis, such noise arises from the stochastic binding of signaling molecules at low concentrations. Using chemotaxis of sperm…