Related papers: Single cells can resolve graded stimuli
Multicellular organisms comprise a diverse collection of stable tissues built from different cell types. It remains unclear how large numbers of interacting cells can precisely coordinate their gene expression during tissue…
To illustrate the power of the biophysical approach in solving important problems in life science, I present here one of our current research projects as an example. We have developed special biophotonic techniques to study the dynamic…
Neurons primarily communicate through the emission of action potentials, or spikes. To generate a spike, a neuron's membrane potential must cross a defined threshold. Does this spiking mechanism inherently prevent neurons from transmitting…
The MEK/ERK signalling pathway is involved in cell division, cell specialisation, survival and cell death. Here we study a polynomial dynamical system describing the dynamics of MEK/ERK proposed by Yeung et al. with their experimental…
We explain how hierarchical organization of biological systems emerges naturally during evolution, through a transition in the units of individuality. We will show how these transitions are the result of competing selective forces operating…
Investigating the emergence of a particular cell type is a recurring theme in models of growing cellular populations. The evolution of resistance to therapy is a classic example. Common questions are: when does the cell type first occur,…
Cataloging the neuronal cell types that comprise circuitry of individual brain regions is a major goal of modern neuroscience and the BRAIN initiative. Single-cell RNA sequencing can now be used to measure the gene expression profiles of…
We are interested in modeling some two-level population dynamics, resulting from the interplay of ecological interactions and phenotypic variation of individuals (or hosts) and the evolution of cells (or parasites) of two types living in…
In this brief paper, the authors study the tuning curves of starburst amacrine cells (SACs) and introduce a quantity called the irresolution or ambiguity of a SAC. They show that the rate of data generated by a starburst amacrine cell is…
Recent progress in diverse intelligence has shown simple learning capacities below the organism level - single cells and even molecular networks. However, there are still many knowledge gaps around learning capacity above the organism…
In multicellular organisms, several cell states coexist. For determining each cell type, cell-cell interactions are often essential, in addition to intracellular gene expression dynamics. Based on dynamical systems theory, we propose a…
Cells crawling through tissues migrate inside a complex fibrous environment called the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides signals regulating motility. Here we investigate one such well-known pathway, involving mutually antagonistic…
Statistical properties of environments experienced by biological signaling systems in the real world change, which necessitate adaptive responses to achieve high fidelity information transmission. One form of such adaptive response is gain…
We present experimental and theoretical arguments, at the single neuron level, suggesting that neuronal response fluctuations reflect a process that positions the neuron near a transition point that separates excitable and unexcitable…
Experiments show that the movement of eukaryotic cells is regulated by a process of phase separation of two competing enzymes on the cell membrane, that effectively amplifies shallow external gradients of chemical attractant. Notably, the…
The advent of single-cell technology has significantly improved our understanding of cellular states and subpopulations in various tissues under normal and diseased conditions by employing data-driven approaches such as clustering and…
Microorganisms employ sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication and environmental sensing, with quorum sensing serving as a fundamental regulatory process. Dysregulation of quorum sensing has been implicated in various…
Cells are able to generate phenotypic diversity both during development and in response to stressful and changing environments, aiding survival. The biologically and medically vital process of a cell assuming a functionally important fate…
Signaling networks are designed to sense an environmental stimulus and adapt to it. We propose and study a minimal model of signaling network that can sense and respond to external stimuli of varying strength in an adaptive manner. The…
Understanding how the dynamics of neural networks is shaped by the computations they perform is a fundamental question in neuroscience. Recently, the framework of efficient coding proposed a theory of how spiking neural networks can compute…