Related papers: Physical Schemata Underlying Biological Pattern Fo…
The human microbiome is a complex ecological system, and describing its structure and function under different environmental conditions is important from both basic scientific and medical perspectives. Viewed through a biostatistical lens,…
The development of complex multicellular organisms from a single parent cell is a highly orchestrated process that cells conduct collectively without central guidance, creating intricate dynamic patterns essential for development and…
Unlike most synthetic materials, biological materials often stiffen as they are deformed. This nonlinear elastic response, critical for the physiological function of some tissues, has been documented since at least the 19th century, but the…
The study of biological cells in terms of mesoscopic, nonequilibrium, nonlinear, stochastic dynamics of open chemical systems provides a paradigm for other complex, self-organizing systems with ultra-fast stochastic fluctuations, short-time…
When two molecular species with mutual affinity are mixed together, various self-assembled phases can arise at low temperature, depending on the shape of like and unlike interactions. Among them, stripes -- where layers of one type are…
The distances over which biological molecules and their complexes can function range from a few nanometres, in the case of folded structures, to millimetres, for example during chromosome organization. Describing phenomena that cover such…
We model an enclosed system of bacteria, whose motility-induced phase separation is coupled to slow population dynamics. Without noise, the system shows both static phase separation and a limit cycle, in which a rising global population…
In certain biological contexts, such as the plumage patterns of birds and stripes on certain species of fishes, pattern formation takes place behind a so-called "wave of competency". Currently, the effects of a wave of competency on the…
Biochemical processes in cells are governed by complex networks of many chemical species interacting stochastically in diverse ways and on different time scales. Constructing microscopically accurate models of such networks is often…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
One of the most important problems in contemporary science, and especially in biology, is to reveal mechanisms of pattern formation. On the level of biological tissues, patterns form due to interactions between cells. These interactions can…
Statistical physics can describe the behavior of microbial populations consisting of many heterogeneous individuals. A direct consequence is the existence of phase transitions, where the behavior of a population changes discontinuously upon…
In multicellular organisms, relations among parts and between parts and the whole are contextual and interdependent. These organisms and their cells are ontogenetically linked: an organism starts as a cell that divides producing…
Complex crystal structures are composed of multiple local environments, and how this type of order emerges spontaneously during crystal growth has yet to be fully understood. We study crystal growth across various structures and along…
The dynamics of cellular pattern formation is crucial for understanding embryonic development and tissue morphogenesis. Recent studies have shown that human dermal fibroblasts cultured on liquid crystal elastomers can exhibit an increase in…
A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex,…
Information transmission in biological signaling circuits has often been described using the metaphor of a noise filter. Cellular systems need accurate, real-time data about their environmental conditions, but the biochemical reaction…
Patterns in reaction-diffusion systems often contain two spatial scales; a long scale determined by a typical wavelength or domain size, and a short scale pertaining to front structures separating different domains. Such patterns naturally…
Bacteria live in environments that are continuously fluctuating and changing. Exploiting any predictability of such fluctuations can lead to an increased fitness. On longer timescales bacteria can "learn" the structure of these fluctuations…
Biological evolution of a population is governed by the fitness landscape, which is a map from genotype to fitness. However, a fitness landscape depends on the organisms environment, and evolution in changing environments is still poorly…