Related papers: Cell size distributions in lineages
Single-cell experiments have revealed cell-to-cell variability in generation times and growth rates for genetically identical cells. Theoretical models relating the fluctuating generation times of single cells to the population growth rate…
Microbial growth and division are fundamental processes relevant to many areas of life science. Of particular interest are homeostasis mechanisms, which buffer growth and division from accumulating fluctuations over multiple cycles. These…
Cell migration is closely linked to cell shape, yet cell size is often assumed to remain constant. This assumption is challenged by recent experiments showing that cells undergo volume loss during spreading and swelling upon activation,…
A big challenge in current biology is to understand the exact self-organization mechanism underlying complex multi-physics coupling developmental processes. With multiscale computations of from subcellular gene expressions to cell…
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…
The data we analyze derives from the observation of numerous cells of the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) growing and dividing. Single cells grow and divide to give birth to two daughter cells, that in turn grow and divide. Thus, a…
Cell growth and gene expression, essential elements of all living systems, have long been the focus of biophysical interrogation. Advances in single-cell methods have invigorated theoretical studies into these processes. However, until…
The rate at which individual bacterial cells grow depends on the concentrations of cellular components such as ribosomes and proteins. These concentrations continuously fluctuate over time and are inherited from mother to daughter cells,…
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…
A mathematical model of Min oscillation in Escherichia coli is numerically studied. The oscillatory state and hysteretic transition are explained with simpler coupled differential equations. Next, we propose a simple model of cell growth…
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…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
The number of extant individuals within a lineage, as exemplified by counts of species numbers across genera in a higher taxonomic category, is known to be a highly skewed distribution. Because the sublineages (such as genera in a clade)…
How cells maintain a stable size has fascinated scientists since the beginning of modern biology, but has remained largely mysterious. Recently, however, the ability to analyze single bacteria in real time has provided new, important…
Cellular phenotype is characterized by different components such as cell size, protein content and cell cycle time. These are global variables that are the outcome of multiple internal microscopic processes. Accordingly, they display some…
The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth,…
Biological tools such as genetic lineage tracing, three dimensional confocal microscopy and next generation DNA sequencing are providing new ways to quantify the distribution of clones of normal and mutated cells. Population-wide clone size…
In exponentially proliferating populations of microbes, the population typically doubles at a rate less than the average doubling time of a single-cell due to variability at the single-cell level. It is known that the distribution 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…
The variability in cell size of an isogenic population of Escherichia coli has been widely reported in experiment. The probability density function (PDF) of cell lengths has been variously described by exponential and lognormal functions.…