Related papers: Optimal strategies for fighting persistent bugs
Based on a recent model of evolving viruses competing with an adapting immune system [1], we study the conditions under which a viral quasispecies can maximize its growth rate. The range of mutation rates that allows viruses to thrive is…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
The striking variety of macroscopic morphologies displayed by bacterial colonies depends on microscopic environmental and behavioural details in a manner that is currently not well understood. A surprising example is sibling inhibition,…
It has long been hypothesized that operating close to the critical state is beneficial for natural, artificial and their evolutionary systems. We put this hypothesis to test in a system of evolving foraging agents controlled by neural…
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 study the evolutionary robustness of strategies in infinitely repeated prisoners' dilemma games in which players make mistakes with a small probability and are patient. The evolutionary process we consider is given by the replicator…
Quantifying the action of antibiotics on biofilms is essential to devise therapies against chronic infections. Biofilms are bacterial communities attached to moist surfaces, sheltered from external aggressions by a polymeric matrix.…
Competing strategies in an evolutionary game model, or species in a biosystem, can easily form a larger unit which protects them from the invasion of an external actor. Such a defensive alliance may have two, three, four or even more…
We study a model for the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) used by biological populations for choosing the time of life-history events, such as migration and breeding. In our model we accounted for both intra-species competition (early…
We investigate optimization of an algal-bacterial consortium, where an exogenous control input modulates bacterial resource allocation between growth and synthesis of a resource that is limiting for algal growth. Maximization of algal…
Experimentalists have observed phenotypic variability in isogenic bacteria populations. We explore the hypothesis that in fluctuating environments this variability is tuned to maximize a bacterium's expected log growth rate, potentially…
Non-genetic forms of antimicrobial drug resistance can result from cell-to-cell variability that is not encoded in the genetic material. Data from recent studies also suggest that non-genetic mechanisms can facilitate the development of…
We investigate a stochastic individual-based model for the population dynamics of host-virus systems where the microbial hosts may transition into a dormant state upon contact with virions, thus evading infection. Such a contact-mediated…
This work introduces a novel epidemiological model that simultaneously considers multiple viral strains, reinfections due to waning immunity response over time and an optimal control formulation. This enables us to derive optimal mitigation…
The body is home to a diverse microbiota, mainly in the gut. Resistant bacteria are selected for by antibiotic treatments, and once resistance becomes widespread in a population of hosts, antibiotics become useless. Here, we develop a…
Micro-robots for, e.g., biomedical applications, need to be equipped with motility strategies that enable them to navigate through complex environments. Inspired by biological microorganisms we recreate motility patterns such as…
Microbial interactions regulate their spread and survival in competitive environments. It is not clear if the physical parameters of the environment regulate the outcome of these interactions. In this work, we show that the opportunistic…
General criterion for best efficiency of the interaction of a complex system with an ever-changing environment is derived. Its exclusive property, set by boundedness, is that the highly non-trivial interplay between parameters that…
We investigate the evolutionary rescue of a microbial population in a gradually deteriorating environment, through a combination of analytical calculations and stochastic simulations. We consider a population destined for extinction in the…
Viruses display striking diversity in structure, transmission mode, immune interaction, and evolutionary behavior. Despite this diversity, viral strategies are not unconstrained. Here we present a unifying framework that treats viral…