Related papers: Senescence Can Explain Microbial Persistence
The introduction of non-native organisms into complex microbiome communities holds enormous potential to benefit society. However, microbiome engineering faces several challenges including successful establishment of the organism into the…
Understanding how a diversity of plants in agroecosystems affects the adaptation of pathogens in a key issue in agroecology. We analyze PDE systems describing the dynamics of adaptation of two phenotypically structured populations, under…
Cellular phenotype is characterized by different components such as cell size, protein content and cell cycle time. These are global variables that are the outcome of multiple internal microscopic processes. Accordingly, they display some…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
We consider a reaction-diffusion model for a population structured in phenotype. We assume that the population lives in a heterogeneous periodic environment, so that a given phenotypic trait may be more or less fit according to the spatial…
Recent methodological advances are enabling better examination of speciation and extinction processes and patterns. A major open question is the origin of large discrepancies in species number between groups of the same age. Existing…
Cyclic dominance is frequently believed to be a mechanism that maintains diversity of competing species. But this delicate balance could also be fragile if some of the members is weakened because an extinction of a species will involve the…
Under low concentrations of antibiotics causing DNA damage, \textit{Escherichia coli} bacteria can trigger stochastically a stress response known as the SOS response. While the expression of this stress response can make individual cells…
In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…
Dynamics maintaining diversity of cell types in a multi-cellular system are studied in relationship with the plasticity of cellular states. First, we introduce a new theoretical framework, reaction-diffusion system on `chemical species…
We study the clustering of a model cyanobacterium \textit{Synechocystis} into microcolonies. The bacteria are allowed to diffuse onto surfaces of different hardness, and interact with the others by aggregation and detachment. We find that…
The capacity to adapt can greatly influence the success of systems that need to compensate for damaged parts, learn how to achieve robust performance in new environments, or exploit novel opportunities that originate from new technological…
Phenotypes of individuals in a population of organisms are not fixed. Phenotypic fluctuations, which describe temporal variation of the phenotype of an individual or individual-to-individual variation across a population, are present in…
Experimental studies of microbial communities routinely reveal that they have multiple stable states. While each of these states is generally resilient, certain perturbations such as antibiotics, probiotics and diet shifts, result in…
In this letter we study the full semi-conservative treatment of a model for the co-evolution of a virus and an adaptive immune system. Regions of viability are calculated for both conservatively and semi-conservatively replicating viruses…
Cells control their size to cope with noise during growth and division. Eukaryotic cells exhibiting "sizer" control (targeting a specific size before dividing) may rely on molecular concentration thresholds, but simple implementations of…
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…
Microorganisms live in environments that inevitably fluctuate between mild and harsh conditions. As harsh conditions may cause extinctions, the rate at which fluctuations occur can shape microbial communities and their diversity, but we…
Communication between cells is realized by exchange of biochemical substances. Due to internal organization of living systems and variability of external parameters, the exchange is heavily influenced by perturbations of various parameters…
Previous evolutionary studies demonstrated how evaluating evolving agents in variable environmental conditions enable them to develop solutions that are robust to environmental variation. We demonstrate how the robustness of the agents can…