Related papers: Dynamic compartmentalization of bacteria: accurate…
We investigate a mechanism for the polar localization of proteins in bacteria. We focus on the MinCD/DivIVA system regulating division site placement in the rod-shaped bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Our model relies on a combination of…
Spatial organization of proteins in cells is important for many biological functions. In general, the nonlinear, spatially coupled models for protein-pattern formation are only accessible to numerical simulations, which has limited insight…
We review the key role played by mathematical modelling in elucidating two centre-finding patterning systems in E. coli: midcell division positioning by the MinCDE system and DNA partitioning by the ParABS system. We focus particularly on…
We combine stroboscopic laser excitation with stochastic photoactivation and super-resolution fluorescence imaging. This makes it possible to record hundreds of diffusion trajectories of small protein molecules in single bacterial cells…
The distributions of many proteins in rod-shaped bacteria are far from homogenous. Often they accumulate at the cell poles or in the cell center. At the same time, the copy number of proteins in a single cell is relatively small making the…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…
Synchronization plays a crucial role in the dynamics of living organisms, from fireflies flashing in unison to pacemaker cells that jointly generate heartbeats. Uncovering the mechanism behind these phenomena requires an understanding of…
We propose a new type of traveling wave pattern, one that can adapt to the size of physical system in which it is embedded. Such a system arises when the initial state has an instability that extends down to zero wavevector, connecting at…
Chemotaxis receptors in E. coli form clusters at the cell poles and also laterally along the cell body, and this clustering plays an important role in signal transduction. Recently, experiments using flourrescence imaging have shown that,…
Aggregates of misfolded proteins are a hallmark of many age-related diseases. Recently, they have been linked to aging of Escherichia coli (E. coli) where protein aggregates accumulate at the old pole region of the aging bacterium. Because…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
Dynamic patterning of specific proteins is essential for the spatiotemporal regulation of many important intracellular processes in procaryotes, eucaryotes, and multicellular organisms. The emergence of patterns generated by interactions of…
Reaction-diffusion systems have been widely used to study spatio-temporal phenomena in cell biology, such as cell polarization. Coupled bulk-surface models naturally include compartmentalization of cytosolic and membrane-bound polarity…
Motile bacteria can migrate along chemical gradients in a process known as chemotaxis. When exposed to uniform environmental stress, Escherichia coli cells coordinate their chemotactic responses to form millimeter-sized condensates…
The bacterium E.Coli swims in a zig-zag manner, in a series of straight runs and tumbles occurring alternately, with the run-durations dependent on the local spatial gradient of chemo-attractants/repellants. This enables the organism to…
To explain the differentiation of stem cells in terms of dynamical systems theory, models of interacting cells with intracellular protein expression dynamics are analyzed and simulated. Simulations were carried out for all possible protein…
Cell membranes phase separate into ordered ${\rm L_o}$ and disordered ${\rm L_d}$ domains depending on their compositions. This membrane compartmentalization is heterogeneous and regulates the localization of specific proteins related to…
We demonstrate 'differential dynamic microscopy' (DDM) for the fast, high throughput characterization of the dynamics of active particles. Specifically, we characterize the swimming speed distribution and the fraction of motile cells in…
We analyze the governing partial differential equations of a model of pole-to-pole oscillations of the MinD protein in a bacterial cell. The sensitivity to extrinsic noise in the parameters of the model is explored. Our analysis shows that…