751 research outputs found
Functional Analysis of Spontaneous Cell Movement under Different Physiological Conditions
Cells can show not only spontaneous movement but also tactic responses to
environmental signals. Since the former can be regarded as the basis to realize
the latter, playing essential roles in various cellular functions, it is
important to investigate spontaneous movement quantitatively at different
physiological conditions in relation to cellular physiological functions. For
that purpose, we observed a series of spontaneous movements by Dictyostelium
cells at different developmental periods by using a single cell tracking
system. Using statistical analysis of these traced data, we found that cells
showed complex dynamics with anomalous diffusion and that their velocity
distribution had power-law tails in all conditions. Furthermore, as development
proceeded, average velocity and persistency of the movement increased and as
too did the exponential behavior in the velocity distribution. Based on these
results, we succeeded in applying a generalized Langevin model to the
experimental data. With this model, we discuss the relation of spontaneous cell
movement to cellular physiological function and its relevance to behavioral
strategies for cell survival.Comment: Accepted to PLoS ON
Random Topologies and the emergence of cooperation: the role of short-cuts
We study in detail the role of short-cuts in promoting the emergence of
cooperation in a network of agents playing the Prisoner's Dilemma Game (PDG).
We introduce a model whose topology interpolates between the one-dimensional
euclidean lattice (a ring) and the complete graph by changing the value of one
parameter (the probability p to add a link between two nodes not already
connected in the euclidean configuration). We show that there is a region of
values of p in which cooperation is largely enhanced, whilst for smaller values
of p only a few cooperators are present in the final state, and for p
\rightarrow 1- cooperation is totally suppressed. We present analytical
arguments that provide a very plausible interpretation of the simulation
results, thus unveiling the mechanism by which short-cuts contribute to promote
(or suppress) cooperation
A comparison of 'pruning' during multi-step planning in depressed and healthy individuals
BACKGROUND: Real-life decisions are often complex because they involve making sequential choices that constrain future options. We have previously shown that to render such multi-step decisions manageable, people 'prune' (i.e. selectively disregard) branches of decision trees that contain negative outcomes. We have theorized that sub-optimal pruning contributes to depression by promoting an oversampling of branches that result in unsavoury outcomes, which results in a negatively-biased valuation of the world. However, no study has tested this theory in depressed individuals. METHODS: Thirty unmedicated depressed and 31 healthy participants were administered a sequential reinforcement-based decision-making task to determine pruning behaviours, and completed measures of depression and anxiety. Computational, Bayesian and frequentist analyses examined group differences in task performance and relationships between pruning and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Consistent with prior findings, participants robustly pruned branches of decision trees that began with large losses, regardless of the potential utility of those branches. However, there was no group difference in pruning behaviours. Further, there was no relationship between pruning and levels of depression/anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence that sub-optimal pruning is evident in depression. Future research could determine whether maladaptive pruning behaviours are observable in specific sub-groups of depressed patients (e.g. in treatment-resistant individuals), or whether misuse of other heuristics may contribute to depression
Interfacial pattern formation far from equilibrium
Over the past few years diffusion-controlled systems have been shown to share a common set of interfacial morphologies. The singular nature of the microscopic dynamics of surface tension and kinetic growth far from equilibrium are critical to morphology selection, with special importance attributed to the anisotropy of these effects. The morphologies which develop can be organized via a morphology diagram according to the driving force and the effective anisotropy. We focus on the properties of the dense-branching morphology (DBM) which appears for sufficiently weak effective anisotropy, and the nature of morphology transitions between the DBM and dendritic growth stabilized by either surface tension or kinetic effects. The DBM is studied in the Hele-Shaw cell, and its structure analyzed by linear stability analysis. A comparison is made between the power spectrum of the structure and the stability analysis. We then provide a detailed account of the morphology diagram and morphology transitions in an anisotropic Hele-Shaw cell. Theoretically the question of morphology transitions is addressed within the boundary-layer model by computing selected velocities as a function of the undercooling for different values of the surface tension and the kinetic term. We argue that the fastest growing morphology is selected whether it is the DBM, surface tension dendrites, or kinetic dendrites. A comparison is made with our experimental results in electrochemical deposition for the correspondence between growth velocities and morphology transitions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26972/1/0000539.pd
Template coexistence in prebiotic vesicle models
The coexistence of distinct templates is a common feature of the diverse
proposals advanced to resolve the information crisis of prebiotic evolution.
However, achieving robust template coexistence turned out to be such a
difficult demand that only a class of models, the so-called package models,
seems to have met it so far. Here we apply Wright's Island formulation of group
selection to study the conditions for the coexistence of two distinct template
types confined in packages (vesicles) of finite capacity. In particular, we
show how selection acting at the level of the vesicles can neutralize the
pressures towards the fixation of any one of the template types (random drift)
and of the type with higher replication rate (deterministic competition). We
give emphasis to the role of the distinct generation times of templates and
vesicles as yet another obstacle to coexistence.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure
Aggregation Patterns in Stressed Bacteria
We study the formation of spot patterns seen in a variety of bacterial
species when the bacteria are subjected to oxidative stress due to hazardous
byproducts of respiration. Our approach consists of coupling the cell density
field to a chemoattractant concentration as well as to nutrient and waste
fields. The latter serves as a triggering field for emission of
chemoattractant. Important elements in the proposed model include the
propagation of a front of motile bacteria radially outward form an initial
site, a Turing instability of the uniformly dense state and a reduction of
motility for cells sufficiently far behind the front. The wide variety of
patterns seen in the experiments is explained as being due the variation of the
details of the initiation of the chemoattractant emission as well as the
transition to a non-motile phase.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX with 4 postscript figures (uuencoded) Figures 1a and
1b are available from the authors; paper submitted to PRL
Group selection models in prebiotic evolution
The evolution of enzyme production is studied analytically using ideas of the
group selection theory for the evolution of altruistic behavior. In particular,
we argue that the mathematical formulation of Wilson's structured deme model
({\it The Evolution of Populations and Communities}, Benjamin/Cumings, Menlo
Park, 1980) is a mean-field approach in which the actual environment that a
particular individual experiences is replaced by an {\it average} environment.
That formalism is further developed so as to avoid the mean-field approximation
and then applied to the problem of enzyme production in the prebiotic context,
where the enzyme producer molecules play the altruists role while the molecules
that benefit from the catalyst without paying its production cost play the
non-altruists role. The effects of synergism (i.e., division of labor) as well
as of mutations are also considered and the results of the equilibrium analysis
are summarized in phase diagrams showing the regions of the space of parameters
where the altruistic, non-altruistic and the coexistence regimes are stable. In
general, those regions are delimitated by discontinuous transition lines which
end at critical points.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure
Novel type of phase transition in a system of self-driven particles
A simple model with a novel type of dynamics is introduced in order to
investigate the emergence of self-ordered motion in systems of particles with
biologically motivated interaction. In our model particles are driven with a
constant absolute velocity and at each time step assume the average direction
of motion of the particles in their neighborhood with some random perturbation
() added. We present numerical evidence that this model results in a
kinetic phase transition from no transport (zero average velocity, ) to finite net transport through spontaneous symmetry breaking of the
rotational symmetry. The transition is continuous since is
found to scale as with
- …