亚细胞过程
Protein synthesis rates are determined, at the translational level, by properties of the transcript's sequence. The efficiency of an mRNA can be tuned by varying the ribosome binding sites controlling the recruitment of the ribosomes, or…
Reconciling the stability of epigenetic patterns with the rapid turnover of histone modifications and their adaptability to external stimuli is an outstanding challenge. Here, we propose a new biophysical mechanism that can establish and…
This is a short review of two common approximations in stochastic chemical and biochemical kinetics. It will appear as Chapter 6 in the book "Quantitative Biology: Theory, Computational Methods and Examples of Models" edited by Brian…
We report here new electrical laws, derived from nonlinear electro-diffusion theory, about the effect of the local geometrical structure, such as curvature, on the electrical properties of a cell. We adopt the Poisson-Nernst-Planck (PNP)…
Do biological cells sense time by the number of their divisions, a process that ends at senescence? We consider the question "can the cell's perception of time be expressed through the length of the shortest telomere?" The answer is that…
During asymmetric cell division, dynein generates forces, which position the spindle to reflect polarity and ensure correct daughter cell fates. The transient cortical localization of dynein raises the question of its targeting. We found…
Natural phenomena frequently involve a very large number of interacting molecules moving in confined regions of space. Cellular transport by motor proteins is an example of such collective behavior. We derive a deterministic compartmental…
Local Ca Releases (LCRs) are crucial events involved in cardiac pacemaker cell function. However, specific algorithms for automatic LCR detection and analysis have not been developed in live, spontaneously beating pacemaker cells. Here we…
ATP-driven proton pumps, which are critical to the operation of a cell, maintain cytosolic and organellar pH levels within a narrow functional range. These pumps employ two very different mechanisms: an elaborate rotary mechanism used by…
In many important cellular processes, including mRNA translation, gene transcription, phosphotransfer, and intracellular transport, biological "particles" move along some kind of "tracks". The motion of these particles can be modeled as a…
The first proposed hypothesis about the mechanism of chloroquine (CQ) action on malaria parasites is DNA intercalation hypothesis which indicates that the site of CQ action is within the nucleus. Later on the interest of research was…
To survive starvation, Bacillus subtilis forms durable spores. After asymmetric cell division, the septum grows around the forespore in a process called engulfment, but the mechanism of force generation is unknown. Here, we derived a novel…
Genetically identical cells under the same environmental conditions can show strong variations in protein copy numbers due to inherently stochastic events in individual cells. We here develop a theoretical framework to address how…
The plant hormones brassinosteroid (BR) and gibberellin (GA) have important roles in a wide range of processes involved in plant growth and development. In this paper we derive and analyse new mathematical models for the BR signalling…
Sensors are the first element of the pathways that control the response of cells to their environment. After chemical, the next most important cue is mechanical, and protein complexes that produce or enable a chemical signal in response to…
Efficient bacterial chromosome segregation typically requires the coordinated action of a three-components, fueled by adenosine triphosphate machinery called the partition complex. We present a phenomenological model accounting for the…
Recently the physical characterization of a number of biological processes has proven indispensable for a full understanding of natural phenomena. One such example is the mechanical properties of transcription, which have been shown to have…
Ammonium assimilation in E. coli is regulated by two paralogous proteins (GlnB and GlnK), which orchestrate interactions with regulators of gene expression, transport proteins and metabolic pathways. Yet how they conjointly modulate the…
Allosteric regulation is found across all domains of life, yet we still lack simple, predictive theories that directly link the experimentally tunable parameters of a system to its input-output response. To that end, we present a general…
Many cell signaling pathways involve the diffusion of messengers that bind/unbind to intracellular components. Quantifying their net transport rate under different conditions, then requires having separate estimates of their free diffusion…