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Toxoplasma gondii is the causative agent responsible for toxoplasmosis and serves as one of the most common parasites in the world. For a successful lytic cycle, T. gondii must traverse biological barriers in order to invade host cells, and…
During early development, waves of activity propagate across the retina and play a key role in the proper wiring of the early visual system. During the stage II these waves are triggered by a transient network of neurons, called Starburst…
Eukaryotic cell motility involves a complex network of interactions between biochemical components and mechanical processes. The cell employs this network to polarize and induce shape changes that give rise to membrane protrusions and…
Living organisms are not just random collections of organic molecules. There is continuous information processing going on in the apparent bouncing around of molecules of life. Optimisation criteria in this information processing can be…
Many of the chemical reactions that take place within a living cell are irreversible. Due to evolutionary pressures, the number of allowable reactions within these systems are highly constrained and thus the resulting metabolic networks…
Apparent biodiversity on earth exists only if we compare different species separated from their environments. Meanwhile coexisting species have to be identical in terms of energetic interactions. Consider the biosphere as a network of…
This piece serves two purposes. Firstly, it aims at elucidating the role of epistasis in shaping, at a molecular level, the evolutionary paths of proteins, as well as the extent to which these epistatic effects are the outcome of an…
The analyses presented herein demonstrate that neuronal electrical activity can be consistently interpreted as a manifestation of murburn redox-mediated electronic dynamics rather than as a process fundamentally driven by transmembrane…
Life has a special status, it even has its own science: biology. In many ways, the logic of life seems to differ from that of atoms, molecules, planets, or any other `inanimate object'. However, life is increasingly measured using…
We generalize the Cable Model to describe the transport characteristics of the gap junctions coupling adjacent cells in the heart muscle. Our model takes into account recent experimental information about the time dependence of the…
Dynamical wiring and rewiring in neural networks are carried out by activity-dependent growth and retraction of axons and dendrites, guided by gudance molecules, released by target cells. Experience-dependent structural changes in cortical…
Motility is characteristic of life, but a common basis for movement has remained to be identified. Diverse systems in motion shift between two states depending on interactions that turnover at the rate of an applied cycle of force. Although…
A simple theory of ion permeation through a channel is presented, in which diffusion occurs according to Fick's law and drift according to Ohm's law, in the electric field determined by all the charges present. This theory accounts for…
This chapter gives an introduction to qualitative and quantitative topological analyses of molecular electronic transitions. Among the possibilities for qualitatively describing how the electronic structure of a molecule is reorganized upon…
Coherent oscillatory activity can arise spontaneously as a result of increased coupling in a system of excitable and passive cells, each being quiescent in isolation. This can potentially explain the appearance of spontaneous rhythmic…
Ordered polarity alignment of a cell population plays a vital role in biology, such as in hair follicle alignment and asymmetric cell division. Here, we propose a theoretical framework for the understanding of generic dynamical properties…
The process of ion transport through a locust potassium channel is described by means of the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE). The deterministic and stochastic components of the process of switching between various conducting states of the…
The function of membrane-embedded proteins such as ion channels depends crucially on their conformation. We demonstrate how conformational changes in asymmetric membrane proteins may be inferred from measurements of their diffusion. Such…
Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…
The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…