相关论文: Phenotypic switching can speed up biological evolu…

Non-genetic perturbations, such as environmental change or developmental noise, can induce novel phenotypes. If an induced phenotype confers a fitness advantage, selection may promote its genetic stabilization. Non-genetic perturbations can…

Biological functions are typically performed by groups of cells that express predominantly the same genes, yet display a continuum of phenotypes. While it is known how one genotype can generate such non-genetic diversity, it remains unclear…

Horizontal gene transfer consists in exchanging genetic materials between microorganisms during their lives. This is a major mechanism of bacterial evolution and is believed to be of main importance in antibiotics resistance. We consider a…

A fundamental feature of collective cell migration is phenotypic heterogeneity which, for example, influences tumour progression and relapse. While current mathematical models often consider discrete phenotypic structuring of the cell…

We study a stochastic model proposed recently in the genetic literature to explain the heterogeneity of cell populations or of gene products. Cells are located in two colonies, whose sizes fluctuate as birth and migration processes in…

Ecology and evolution under changing environments are important in many subfields of biology with implications for medicine. Here, we explore an example: the consequences of fluctuating environments on the emergence of antibiotic…

Hysteresis and bet-hedging (random choice of phenotypes) are two different observations typically linked with multiplicity of phenotypes in biological systems. Hysteresis can be viewed as form of the system's persistent memory of past…

We consider a stochastic model of population dynamics where each individual is characterised by a trait in {0,1,...,L} and has a natural reproduction rate, a logistic death rate due to age or competition and a probability of mutation…

The outcomes of evolution are determined by which mutations occur and fix. In rapidly adapting microbial populations, this process is particularly hard to predict because lineages with different beneficial mutations often spread…

The importance of mutator clones in the adaptive evolution of asexual populations is not fully understood. Here we address this problem by using an ab initio microscopic model of living cells, whose fitness is derived directly from their…

Many biological systems regulate phenotypic heterogeneity as a fitness-maximising strategy in uncertain and dynamic environments. Analysis of such strategies is typically confined both to a discrete set of environmental conditions, and to a…

Phenotypic variation is a hallmark of cellular physiology. Metabolic heterogeneity, in particular, underpins single-cell phenomena such as microbial drug tolerance and growth variability. Much research has focussed on transcriptomic and…

Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…

Multiple phenotypic states often arise in a single cell with different gene-expression states that undergo transcription regulation with positive feedback. Recent experiments have shown that at least in E. coli, the gene state switching can…

Motivated by recent understandings in the stochastic natures of gene expression, biochemical signaling, and spontaneous reversible epigenetic switchings, we study a simple deterministic cell population dynamics in which subpopulations grow…

Microbial ecosystems are commonly modeled by fixed interactions between species in steady exponential growth states. However, microbes often modify their environments so strongly that they are forced out of the exponential state into…

Bacterial populations in natural conditions are expected to experience stochastic environmental fluctuations, and in addition, environments are affected by bacterial activities since they consume substrates and excrete various chemicals. We…

The evolution of antimicrobial resistance can be strongly affected by variations of antimicrobial concentration. Here, we study the impact of periodic alternations of absence and presence of antimicrobial on resistance evolution in a…

Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…

One of the most challenging problems in microbiology is to understand how a small fraction of microbes that resists killing by antibiotics can emerge in a population of genetically identical cells, the phenomenon known as persistence or…