Related papers: Quantifying cellular autonomy in multi-cue environ…
Cells perform directed motion in response to external stimuli that they detect by sensing the environment with their membrane protrusions. In particular, several biochemical and biophysical cues give rise to tactic migration in the…
Cell signaling networks are complex and often incompletely characterized, making it difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of the mechanisms they encode. Mathematical modeling of these networks provides important clues, but the models…
We typically think of cells as responding to external signals independently by regulating their gene expression levels, yet they often locally exchange information and coordinate. Can such spatial coupling be of benefit for conveying…
The growth rate of organisms depends both on external conditions and on internal states, such as the expression levels of various genes. We show that to achieve a criterion mean growth rate over an ensemble of conditions, the internal…
We study the capacity with which a system of independent neuron-like units represents a given set of stimuli. We assume that each neuron provides a fixed amount of information, and that the information provided by different neurons has a…
Cells move by run and tumble, a kind of dynamics in which the cell alternates runs over straight lines and re-orientations. This erratic motion may be influenced by external factors, like chemicals, nutrients, the extra-cellular matrix, in…
Cellular automata have been useful artificial models for exploring how relatively simple rules combined with spatial memory can give rise to complex emergent patterns. Moreover, studying the dynamics of how rules emerge under artificial…
The existence of 'what' and 'where' pathways of information processing in the brain was proposed almost 30 years ago, but there is still a lack of a clear mathematical model that could show how these pathways work together. We propose a…
Measuring the statistical dependence between observed signals is a primary tool for scientific discovery. However, biological systems often exhibit complex non-linear interactions that currently cannot be captured without a priori knowledge…
Artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision support systems can be highly accurate yet still fail to support users or improve decisions. Existing theories of AI-assisted decision-making focus on calibrating reliance on AI advice, leaving it…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
Measuring the statistical dependence between observed signals is a primary tool for scientific discovery. However, biological systems often exhibit complex non-linear interactions that currently cannot be captured without a priori knowledge…
Cellular decision-making based on information received from the external environment is frequently initiated by transmembrane receptors. These receptors are known to propagate such information by triggering a series of irreversible,…
Biological organisms exhibit diverse strategies for adapting to varying environments. For example, a population of organisms may express the same phenotype in all environments (`unvarying strategy'), or follow environmental cues and express…
Autologous chemotaxis, in which cells secrete and detect molecules to determine the direction of fluid flow, is thwarted at high cell density because molecules from other cells interfere with a given cell's signal. Using a minimal model of…
Development in multi-cellular organisms is marked by a high degree of spatial organization of the cells attaining distinct fates in the embryo. We show that receptor-ligand interaction between cells in close physical proximity adaptively…
Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…
Infants are experts at playing, with an amazing ability to generate novel structured behaviors in unstructured environments that lack clear extrinsic reward signals. We seek to mathematically formalize these abilities using a neural network…
The research field of Artificial Life studies how life-like phenomena such as autopoiesis, agency, or self-regulation can self-organize in computer simulations. In cellular automata (CA), a key open-question has been whether it it is…
Cell decision-making refers to the process by which cells gather information from their local microenvironment and regulate their internal states to create appropriate responses. Microenvironmental cell sensing plays a key role in this…