Antibiotics that interfere with translation, when combined, interact in diverse and difficult-to-predict ways. We explain these interactions by “translation bottlenecks”: points in the translation cycle where antibiotics block ribosomal progression. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms of drug interactions between translation inhibitors, we generate translation bottlenecks genetically using...
In 1956, E. O. Powell introduced a novel approach that allowed one to understand the relations between various types of probability distributions used for description of a bacterial population such as interdivision-time probability distribution or age structure. Since then, numerous other authors extended Powell's ideas by introducing additional complications within the model, e.g., taking...
We demonstrate a single chamber, 96-well plated based Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) with printed electronic components. This invention is aimed at robust selection of electrogenic microbial community under specific conditions, e.g. electrode potential, pH, nutrient concentration, salt concentration that can be altered within the 96 well plate array. This invention enables robust selection of...
Many ecological studies employ general models that can feature an arbitrary number of populations. A common requirement imposed on such models is what we call clone consistency: If the individuals from two populations are indistinguishable, joining these populations into one shall not affect the outcome of the model. Otherwise a model produces different outcomes for the same scenario. Using...
Cell migration is one of the fundamental cellular phenomenon connected to several important biological processes like embryonic development, wound healing, tissue engineering or neural development. Impaired regulation of cell migration can be the cause of many diseases like osteoporosis, arthritis or cancer metastasis. For these reasons, studies of cell migration are of particular interest...
During embryo development there is a rapid growth in cell numbers that forms complex structures. Skin pattern formation is an early process during the embryogenesis and happens before the cells fully differentiate. In the present project we consider skin patterning in mouse embryos, where cell aggregates form based on a hierarchical process, involving interactions between the epidermal cell...
The origins of the protein noise floor – a lower bound for noise in gene expression, experimentally observed in highly expressed genes – are still debated. We propose a minimal model of gene expression in bacteria, which combines several contributions to the stochastic noise in protein levels: Variation in mean protein concentration during cell cycle, translational bursts, protein partitioning...
Early embryogenesis is driven by complex spatio-temporal patterns that specify distinct cell identities according to their locations in the embryo. This process is remarkably reproducible, even though it results from regulatory interactions that are individually noisy. Despite intense study, we still lack a comprehensive, biophysically realistic model for at least one biological system that...
Arteriosclerosis is hardening of arteries. Its one of the variances is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by the accumulation of plaque in the intima, the innermost layer of arteries. Atherosclerosis is the leading root cause of many cardiovascular diseases worldwide. The complete biochemical process of atherosclerotic plaque formation in relation to...
The use of neutron capture reactions in cancer therapy was proposed already in 1936, four years after the discovery of the neutron. Up to now, this kind of cancer treatment is widely used for tumors with a poor response to traditional therapies (surgery, γ radiotherapy, or chemotherapy). The use of 10B selectively absorbed by the cancer cells provides high dose delivery to the malignancy with...
The development of new cell imaging techniques has enabled us to investigate spatiotemporal electrical gradients and their influence on cell migration and pattern formation of developing tissues. Membrane voltage changes can trigger biophysical process inside the cell, which in turn can activate genetic signaling pathways regarding processes like cellular differentiation or apoptosis. Because...
Coagulation cascade is one of the best-known physiological systems, which biological role is regulated by 20 coagulation factors, 7 fibrinolytic factors and cell elements (platelets and endothelium). The number of known factors has been incrementally extended within 50-ties of previous century, giving clinicians more understanding about this extremely complicated biological system, to treat...
