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We investigate the dynamics of a colony of crawling, proliferating cells with a minimal, mechanical cell model. The cells consist of two disks, modelling the cell body and a pseudopod, connected by a finite extensible spring. The cells…
The ubiquity of information transmission via molecular communication between cells is comprehensively documented on Earth; this phenomenon might even have played a vital role in the origin(s) and early evolution of life. Motivated by these…
In the postgenome era many efforts have been dedicated to systematically elucidate the complex web of interacting genes and proteins. These efforts include experimental and computational methods. Microarray technology offers an opportunity…
The cell cycle is a tightly controlled process, yet its underlying genetic network shows marked differences across species. Which of the associated structural features follow solely from the ability to impose the appropriate gene expression…
This chapter synthesizes evidence from cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychological studies, and computational models for a complex systems inspired theory of creativity, and its role in cultural evolution. Creativity…
Systemic properties of living cells are the result of molecular dynamics governed by so-called genetic regulatory networks (GRN). These networks capture all possible features of cells and are responsible for the immense levels of adaptation…
Evolution is the theory that plants and animals today have come from kinds that have existed in the past. Scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace dedicate their life to observe how species interact with their environment, grow,…
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,…
Since protein mutations are the main driving force of evolution at the molecular level, a proper analysis of them (and the factors controlling them) will enable us to find a response to several crucial queries in evolutionary biology. Among…
It has been proposed that cultural evolution was made possible by a cognitive transition brought about by onset of the capacity for self-triggered recall and rehearsal. Here we develop a novel idea that models of collectively autocatalytic…
The advent of new experimental genomic technologies and the massive increase of DNA sequence information is helping researchers better understand how our genes work. Recently, experiments on mRNA abundance (gene expression) have revealed…
Proteins are macromolecules that mediate a significant fraction of the cellular processes that underlie life. An important task in bioengineering is designing proteins with specific 3D structures and chemical properties which enable…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
A multi-type neutral Cannings population model with mutation and fixed subpopulation sizes is analyzed. Under appropriate conditions, as all subpopulation sizes tend to infinity, the ancestral process, properly time-scaled, converges to a…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
Many populations, e.g. of cells, bacteria, viruses, or replicating DNA molecules, start small, from a few individuals, and grow large into a noticeable fraction of the environmental carrying capacity $K$. Typically, the elements of the…
Many biological, physical, and social interactions have a particular dependence on where they take place. In living cells, protein movement between the nucleus and cytoplasm affects cellular response (i.e., proteins must be present in the…
We present a model of the evolution of control systems in a genome under environmental constraints. The model conceptually follows the Jacob and Monod model of gene control. Genes contain control elements which respond to the internal state…
The sequence of nucleotide bases occurring in an organism's DNA is often regarded as a codescript for its construction. However, information in a DNA sequence can only be regarded as a codescript relative to an operational biochemical…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…