Related papers: Stochastic gene expression in switching environmen…

Standard neutral population genetics theory with a strictly fixed population size has important limitations. An alternative model that allows independently fluctuating population sizes and reproduces the standard neutral evolution is…

We study how environmental stochasticity influences the long-term population size in certain one- and two-species models. The difficulty is that even when one can prove that there is persistence, it is usually impossible to say anything…

We study an individual based model describing competition in space between two different alleles. Although the model is similar in spirit to classic models of spatial population genetics such as the stepping stone model, here however space…

Horizontal gene transfer consists in exchanging genetic materials between microorganisms during their lives. This is a major mechanism of bacterial evolution and is believed to be of main importance in antibiotics resistance. We consider a…

Cell size varies between different cell types, and between different growth and osmotic conditions. However, the nuclear-to-cell volume ratio (N/C ratio) remains nearly constant. In this paper, we build on existing deterministic models of…

Single species population models and discrete stochastic gene frequency models are two standards of mathematical biology important for the evolution of populations. An agent based model is presented which reproduces these models and then…

We propose a hybrid dynamical system approach to model the evolution of a pathogen that experiences different selective pressures according to a stochastic process. In every environment, the evolution of the pathogen is described by a…

We give a overview of stochastic models of evolution that have found applications in genetics, ecology and linguistics for an audience of nonspecialists, especially statistical physicists. In particular, we focus mostly on neutral models in…

Two powerful and complementary experimental approaches are commonly used to study the cell cycle and cell biology: One class of experiments characterizes the statistics (or demographics) of an unsynchronized exponentially-growing…

A population of individuals with the same genes can present heterogeneous traits (phenotypes). The prevalence of this heterogeneity can be explained as a bet-hedging strategy that improves the population proliferation rate (fitness) in…

The concept of fitness as a measure for a species's success in natural selection is central to the theory of evolution. We here investigate how reproduction rates which are not constant but vary in response to environmental fluctuations,…

Density dependence is important in the ecology and evolution of microbial and cancer cells. Typically, we can only measure net growth rates, but the underlying density-dependent mechanisms that give rise to the observed dynamics can…

We consider a model for a population in a heterogeneous environment, with logistic type local population dynamics, under the assumption that individuals can switch between two different nonzero rates of diffusion. Such switching behavior…

Establishing a quantitative connection between the population growth rate and the generation times of single cells is a prerequisite for understanding evolutionary dynamics of microbes. However, existing theories fail to account for the…

Gene transcription is a highly stochastic and dynamic process. As a result, the mRNA copy number of a given gene is heterogeneous both between cells and across time. We present a framework to model gene transcription in populations of cells…

Previously, we developed a population model incorporating the Allee effect and periodic environmental fluctuations, in which organisms alternate between nomadic and colonial behaviours. This switching strategy is regulated by biological…

The adaptive immune system relies on the diversity of receptors expressed on the surface of B and T-cells to protect the organism from a vast amount of pathogenic threats. The proliferation and degradation dynamics of different cell types…

Metabolic heterogeneity is widely recognised as the next challenge in our understanding of non-genetic variation. A growing body of evidence suggests that metabolic heterogeneity may result from the inherent stochasticity of intracellular…

We study the asymptotic behaviors of stochastic cell fate decision between proliferation and differentiation. We propose a model of a self-replicating Langevin system, where cells choose their fate (i.e. proliferation or differentiation)…

Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…