Related papers: Limitations to Chemotactic Concentration Sensing d…
Living cells often need to measure chemical concentrations that vary in time. To this end, they deploy many resources, e.g. receptors, downstream signaling molecules, time and energy. Here, we present a theory for the optimal design of a…
Biological cells are able to accurately sense chemicals with receptors at their surfaces, allowing cells to move towards sources of attractant and away from sources of repellent. The accuracy of sensing chemical concentration is ultimately…
The evolution of multicellular organisms from monocellular ancestors represents one of the greatest advances of the history of life. The assembly of such multicellular organisms requires signalling and response between cells: over millions…
Microorganisms like bacteria can sense concentration of chemo-attractants in its medium very accurately. They achieve this through interaction between the receptors on their cell surface and the chemo-attractant molecules (like sugar). But…
Collective oscillation of cells in a population has been reported under diverse biological contexts and with vastly different molecular constructs. Could there be common principles similar to those that govern spontaneous oscillation in…
Metastasis is a process of cell migration that can be collective and guided by chemical cues. Viewing metastasis in this way, as a physical phenomenon, allows one to draw upon insights from other studies of collective sensing and migration…
Bacterial chemotaxis is controlled by the signalling of a cluster of receptors. A cooperative model is presented, in which coupling between neighbouring receptor dimers enhances the sensitivity with which stimuli can be detected, without…
Apoptosis, or genetically programmed cell death, is a crucial cellular process that maintains the balance between life and death in cells. The precise molecular mechanism of apoptosis signaling and how these two pathways are differentially…
A large number of eukaryotic cells are able to directly detect external chemical gradients with great accuracy and the ultimate limit to their sensitivity has been a topic of debate for many years. Previous work has been done to understand…
Cells use biochemical networks to translate environmental information into intracellular responses. These responses can be highly dynamic, but how the information is encoded in these dynamics remains poorly understood. Here we investigate…
The signaling apparatus mediating bacterial chemotaxis can adapt to a wide range of persistent external stimuli. In many cases, the bacterial activity returns to its pre-stimulus level exactly and this "perfect adaptability" is robust…
Dictyostelium discoideum (D.d.) is a widely studied amoeba due to its capabilities of development, survival, and self-organization. During aggregation it produces and relays a chemical signal (cAMP) which shows spirals and target centers.…
In many sensory systems, transmembrane receptors are spatially organized in large clusters. Such arrangement may facilitate signal amplification and the integration of multiple stimuli. However, this organization likely also affects the…
Cells use surface receptors to estimate the concentration of external ligands. Limits on the accuracy of such estimations have been well studied for pairs of ligand and receptor species. However, the environment typically contains many…
Biological cells estimate concentration gradients of signaling molecules with a precision that is limited not only by sensing noise, but additionally by the cell's own stochastic motion. We ask for the theoretical limits of gradient…
Cells continuously probe their environment with membrane receptors, achieving subsecond adaptation of their behaviour [1-3]. Recently, several receptors, including cadherins, were found to bind ligands with a lifetime of order of one…
Chemotactic cells of eukaryotic organisms are able to accurately sense shallow chemical concentration gradients using cell-surface receptors. This sensing ability is remarkable as cells must be able to spatially resolve small fractional…
Cells sense external concentrations and, via biochemical signaling, respond by regulating the expression of target proteins. Both in signaling networks and gene regulation there are two main mechanisms by which the concentration can be…
Inputs to signaling pathways can have complex statistics that depend on the environment and on the behavioral response to previous stimuli. Such behavioral feedback is particularly important in navigation. Successful navigation relies on…
Cells are constantly exposed to fluctuating environmental conditions. External signals are sensed, processed and integrated by cellular signal transduction networks, which translate input signals into specific cellular responses by means of…