Related papers: Selective advantage for multicellular replicative …
Development combines three basic processes asymmetric --- cell division, signaling and gene regulation --- in a multitude of ways to create an overwhelming diversity of multicellular life-forms. Here, we attempt to chart this diversity…
Cellular life requires the presence of a set of biochemical mechanisms in order to maintain a predictable process of growth and division. Several attempts have been made towards the building of minimal protocells from a top-down approach,…
As cells grow and divide under a given environment, they become crowded and resources are limited, as seen in bacterial biofilms and multicellular aggregates. These cells often show strong interactions through exchanging chemicals, as in…
Decisions in the cell that lead to its ultimate fate are important for cellular functions such as proliferation, growth, differentiation, development and death. Understanding this decision process is imperative for advancements in the…
The goal of this article is to contribute towards the conceptual and quantitative understanding of the evolutionary benefits for (microbial) populations to maintain a seed bank (consisting of dormant individuals) when facing fluctuating…
We investigate the competition between two quasispecies residing on two disparate neutral networks. Under the assumption that the two neutral networks have different topologies and fitness levels, it is the mutation rate that determines…
Several pathogens use evolvability as a survival strategy against acquired immunity of the host. Despite their high variability in time, some of them exhibit quite low variability within the population at any given time, a somehow…
To unveil the logic of cell from a level of chemical reaction dynamics, we need to clarify how ensemble of chemicals can autonomously produce the set of chemical, without assuming a specific external control echanism. A cell consists of a…
In the study of the evolution of cooperation, resource limitations are usually assumed just to provide a finite population size. Recently, however, it has been pointed out that resource limitation may also generate dynamical payoffs able to…
This paper introduces a continuous model for Multi-cellular Developmental Design. The cells are fixed on a 2D grid and exchange "chemicals" with their neighbors during the growth process. The quantity of chemicals that a cell produces, as…
I study a population model in which the reproduction rate lambda is inherited with mutation, favoring fast reproducers in the short term, but conflicting with a process that eliminates agglomerations of individuals. The model is a variant…
All life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce. Despite expected pressure to evolve a simple system with the fastest replication speed, the mechanism by which…
Biological and social systems are structured at multiple scales, and the incentives of individuals who interact in a group may diverge from the collective incentive of the group as a whole. Mechanisms to resolve this tension are responsible…
A simple analytical framework to study the molecular quasispecies evolution of finite populations is proposed, in which the population is assumed to be a random combination of the constiyuent molecules in each generation,i.e., linkage…
The self-protection of alliances against external invaders is a key concept behind the maintenance of biodiversity in the face of natural selection. But since these alliances, which can be formed by different numbers of competitors, can…
Through extensive studies of dynamical system modeling cellular growth and reproduction, we find evidence that complexity arises in multicellular organisms naturally through evolution. Without any elaborate control mechanism, these systems…
Developmental dynamics of multicellular organism is a process that takes place in a multi-stable system in which each attractor state represents a cell type and attractor transitions correspond to cell differentiation paths. This new…
Microbial communities display extreme diversity. A variety of strains or species coexist even when limited by a single resource. It has been argued that metabolite secretion creates new niches and facilitates such diversity. Nonetheless, it…
Cancer is a complex disease and thus is complicated to model. However, simple models that describe the main processes involved in tumoral dynamics, e.g., competition and mutation, can give us clues about cancer behaviour, at least…
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…