Related papers: Evolutionary Analysis of Biological Excitability
In a succession of articles published over 65 years ago, Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Sir Andrew Fielding Huxley established what now forms our physical understanding of excitation in nerve, and how the axon conducts the action potential.…
The process of evolution by natural selection leads to phenotypes of increasing fitness. For cellular chemical reaction networks, this means optimising a variety of fitness functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external…
In this work, we systematically investigate the spectral and transport properties of exciton-polaritons under the explicit influence of intermolecular vibrational coupling, which introduces dynamic disorder. In the context of a…
The paper highlights the role of a positive feedback gating mechanism at the cellular level in the robust- ness and modulation properties of rhythmic activities at the circuit level. The results are presented in the context of half-center…
Boolean networks with canalizing functions are used to model gene regulatory networks. In order to learn how such networks may behave under evolutionary forces, we simulate the evolution of a single Boolean network by means of an adaptive…
Biological networks such as gene regulatory networks possess desirable properties. They are more robust and controllable than random networks. This motivates the search for structural and dynamical features that evolution has incorporated…
The exciton dynamics in a molecular heterodimer is studied as a function of differences in excitation and reorganization energies, asymmetry in transition dipole moments and excited state lifetimes. The heterodimer is composed of two…
Biological membranes and vesicles play a central role in living systems, forming dynamic interfaces that regulate cellular organization and function. Classical descriptions of membrane mechanics that are rooted in equilibrium statistical…
Active phenomena which involve force generation and motion play a key role in a number of phenomena in living cells such as cell motility, muscle contraction and the active transport of material and organelles. Here we discuss mechanical…
The influence of intrinsic channel noise on the spontaneous spiking activity of poisoned excitable membrane patches is studied by use of a stochastic generalization of the Hodgkin-Huxley model. Internal noise stemming from the stochastic…
Neurons and other excitable systems can release energy suddenly given a small stimulus. Excitability has recently drawn increasing interest in optics, as it is key to realize all-optical artificial neurons enabling speed-of-light…
Cell polarity and movement are fundamental to many biological functions. Experimental and theoretically studies have indicated that interactions of certain proteins lead to the cell polarization which plays a key role in controlling the…
Evolving biomolecular networks have to combine the stability against perturbations with flexibility allowing their constituents to assume new roles in the cell. Gene duplication followed by functional divergence of associated proteins is a…
We describe a simple conductance-based model neuron that includes intra- and extra-cellular ion concentration dynamics and show that this model exhibits periodic bursting. The bursting arises as the fast spiking behavior of the neuron is…
Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…
Living cells must control the reading out or "expression" of information encoded in their genomes, and this regulation often is mediated by transcription factors--proteins that bind to DNA and either enhance or repress the expression of…
Unassisted ion transport through lipid membranes plays a crucial role in many cell functions without which life would not be possible, yet the precise mechanism behind the process remains unknown due to its molecular complexity. Here, we…
Cellular bioelectricity describes the biological phenomenon in which cells in living tissue generate and maintain patterns of voltage gradients induced by differing concentrations of charged ions. A growing body of research suggests that…
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
Neuronal excitability is the phenomena that describes action potential generation due to a stimulus input. Commonly, neuronal excitability is divided into two classes: Type I and Type II, both having different properties that affect…