TY - JOUR AB - Two-player games on graphs are widely studied in formal methods, as they model the interaction between a system and its environment. The game is played by moving a token throughout a graph to produce an infinite path. There are several common modes to determine how the players move the token through the graph; e.g., in turn-based games the players alternate turns in moving the token. We study the bidding mode of moving the token, which, to the best of our knowledge, has never been studied in infinite-duration games. The following bidding rule was previously defined and called Richman bidding. Both players have separate budgets, which sum up to 1. In each turn, a bidding takes place: Both players submit bids simultaneously, where a bid is legal if it does not exceed the available budget, and the higher bidder pays his bid to the other player and moves the token. The central question studied in bidding games is a necessary and sufficient initial budget for winning the game: a threshold budget in a vertex is a value t ∈ [0, 1] such that if Player 1’s budget exceeds t, he can win the game; and if Player 2’s budget exceeds 1 − t, he can win the game. Threshold budgets were previously shown to exist in every vertex of a reachability game, which have an interesting connection with random-turn games—a sub-class of simple stochastic games in which the player who moves is chosen randomly. We show the existence of threshold budgets for a qualitative class of infinite-duration games, namely parity games, and a quantitative class, namely mean-payoff games. The key component of the proof is a quantitative solution to strongly connected mean-payoff bidding games in which we extend the connection with random-turn games to these games, and construct explicit optimal strategies for both players. AU - Avni, Guy AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Chonev, Ventsislav K ID - 6752 IS - 4 JF - Journal of the ACM SN - 00045411 TI - Infinite-duration bidding games VL - 66 ER - TY - CONF AB - Numerous biophysical questions require the quantification of short-range interactions between (functionalized) surfaces and synthetic or biological objects such as cells. Here, we present an original, custom built setup for reflection interference contrast microscopy that can assess distances between a substrate and a flowing object at high speed with nanometric accuracy. We demonstrate its use to decipher the complex biochemical and mechanical interplay regulating blood cell homing at the vessel wall in the microcirculation using an in vitro approach. We show that in the absence of specific biochemical interactions, flowing cells are repelled from the soft layer lining the vessel wall, contributing to red blood cell repulsion in vivo. In contrast, this so-called glycocalyx stabilizes rolling of cells under flow in the presence of a specific receptor naturally present on activated leucocytes and a number of cancer cell lines. AU - Davies, Heather S. AU - Baranova, Natalia S. AU - El Amri, Nouha AU - Coche-Guérente, Liliane AU - Verdier, Claude AU - Bureau, Lionel AU - Richter, Ralf P. AU - Débarre, Delphine ID - 7010 SN - 1605-7422 T2 - Advances in Microscopic Imaging II TI - Blood cell-vessel wall interactions probed by reflection interference contrast microscopy VL - 11076 ER - TY - JOUR AB - When grape-sized aqueous dimers are irradiated in a microwave oven, an intense electromagnetic hotspot forms at their point of contact, often igniting a plasma. Here we show that this irradiation can result in the injection of mechanical energy. By examining irradiated hydrogel dimers through high-speed imaging, we find that they repeatedly bounce off of each other while irradiated. We determine that an average of 1 lJ of mechanical energy is injected into the pair during each collision. Furthermore, a characteristic high-pitched audio signal is found to accompany each collision. We show that both the audio signal and the energy injection arise via an interplay between vaporization and elastic deformations in the region of contact, the so-called ‘elastic Liedenfrost effect’. Our results establish a novel, non-contact method of injecting mechanical energy into soft matter systems, suggesting application in fields such as soft robotics. AU - Khattak, Hamza K. AU - Waitukaitis, Scott R AU - Slepkov, Aaron D. ID - 6763 IS - 29 JF - Soft Matter SN - 1744683X TI - Microwave induced mechanical activation of hydrogel dimers VL - 15 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Mathematical models have been used successfully at diverse scales of biological organization, ranging from ecology and population dynamics to stochastic reaction events occurring between individual molecules in single cells. Generally, many biological processes unfold across multiple scales, with mutations being the best studied example of how stochasticity at the molecular scale can influence outcomes at the population scale. In many other contexts, however, an analogous link between micro- and macro-scale remains elusive, primarily due to the challenges involved in setting up and analyzing multi-scale models. Here, we employ such a model to investigate how stochasticity propagates from individual biochemical reaction events in the bacterial innate immune system to the ecology of bacteria and bacterial viruses. We show analytically how the dynamics of bacterial populations are shaped by the activities of immunity-conferring enzymes in single cells and how the ecological consequences imply optimal bacterial defense strategies against viruses. Our results suggest that bacterial populations in the presence of viruses can either optimize their initial growth rate or their population size, with the first strategy favoring simple immunity featuring a single restriction modification system and the second strategy favoring complex bacterial innate immunity featuring several simultaneously active restriction modification systems. AU - Ruess, Jakob AU - Pleska, Maros AU - Guet, Calin C AU - Tkačik, Gašper ID - 6784 IS - 7 JF - PLoS Computational Biology TI - Molecular noise of innate immunity shapes bacteria-phage ecologies VL - 15 ER - TY - JOUR AB - An important adaptation during colonization of land by plants is gravitropic growth of roots, which enabled roots to reach water and nutrients, and firmly anchor plants in the ground. Here we provide insights into the evolution of an efficient root gravitropic mechanism in the seed plants. Architectural innovation, with gravity perception constrained in the root tips along with a shootward transport route for the phytohormone auxin, appeared only upon the emergence of seed plants. Interspecies complementation and protein domain swapping revealed functional innovations within the PIN family of auxin transporters leading to the evolution of gravitropism-specific PINs. The unique apical/shootward subcellular localization of PIN proteins is the major evolutionary innovation that connected the anatomically separated sites of gravity perception and growth response via the mobile auxin signal. We conclude that the crucial anatomical and functional components emerged hand-in-hand to facilitate the evolution of fast gravitropic response, which is one of the major adaptations of seed plants to dry land. AU - Zhang, Yuzhou AU - Xiao, G AU - Wang, X AU - Zhang, Xixi AU - Friml, Jiří ID - 6778 JF - Nature Communications SN - 2041-1723 TI - Evolution of fast root gravitropism in seed plants VL - 10 ER - TY - JOUR AB - To determine the visual sensitivities of an organism of interest, quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (qRT–PCR) is often used to quantify expression of the light‐sensitive opsins in the retina. While qRT–PCR is an affordable, high‐throughput method for measuring expression, it comes with inherent normalization issues that affect the interpretation of results, especially as opsin expression can vary greatly based on developmental stage, light environment or diurnal cycles. We tested for diurnal cycles of opsin expression over a period of 24 hr at 1‐hr increments and examined how normalization affects a data set with fluctuating expression levels using qRT–PCR and transcriptome data from the retinae of the cichlid Pelmatolapia mariae. We compared five methods of normalizing opsin expression relative to (a) the average of three stably expressed housekeeping genes (Ube2z, EF1‐α and β‐actin), (b) total RNA concentration, (c) GNAT2, (the cone‐specific subunit of transducin), (d) total opsin expression and (e) only opsins expressed in the same cone type. Normalizing by proportion of cone type produced the least variation and would be best for removing time‐of‐day variation. In contrast, normalizing by housekeeping genes produced the highest daily variation in expression and demonstrated that the peak of cone opsin expression was in the late afternoon. A weighted correlation network analysis showed that the expression of different cone opsins follows a very similar daily cycle. With the knowledge of how these normalization methods affect opsin expression data, we make recommendations for designing sampling approaches and quantification methods based upon the scientific question being examined. AU - Yourick, Miranda R. AU - Sandkam, Benjamin A. AU - Gammerdinger, William J AU - Escobar-Camacho, Daniel AU - Nandamuri, Sri Pratima AU - Clark, Frances E. AU - Joyce, Brendan AU - Conte, Matthew A. AU - Kocher, Thomas D. AU - Carleton, Karen L. ID - 6821 IS - 6 JF - Molecular Ecology Resources TI - Diurnal variation in opsin expression and common housekeeping genes necessitates comprehensive normalization methods for quantitative real-time PCR analyses VL - 19 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider the Nelson model with ultraviolet cutoff, which describes the interaction between non-relativistic particles and a positive or zero mass quantized scalar field. We take the non-relativistic particles to obey Fermi statistics and discuss the time evolution in a mean-field limit of many fermions. In this case, the limit is known to be also a semiclassical limit. We prove convergence in terms of reduced density matrices of the many-body state to a tensor product of a Slater determinant with semiclassical structure and a coherent state, which evolve according to a fermionic version of the Schrödinger–Klein–Gordon equations. AU - Leopold, Nikolai K AU - Petrat, Sören P ID - 6788 IS - 10 JF - Annales Henri Poincare SN - 1424-0637 TI - Mean-field dynamics for the Nelson model with fermions VL - 20 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The green‐beard effect is one proposed mechanism predicted to underpin the evolu‐tion of altruistic behavior. It relies on the recognition and the selective help of altruists to each other in order to promote and sustain altruistic behavior. However, this mechanism has often been dismissed as unlikely or uncommon, as it is assumed that both the signaling trait and altruistic trait need to be encoded by the same gene or through tightly linked genes. Here, we use models of indirect genetic effects (IGEs) to find the minimum correlation between the signaling and altruistic trait required for the evolution of the latter. We show that this correlation threshold depends on the strength of the interaction (influence of the green beard on the expression of the altruistic trait), as well as the costs and benefits of the altruistic behavior. We further show that this correlation does not necessarily have to be high and support our analytical results by simulations. AU - Trubenova, Barbora AU - Hager, Reinmar ID - 6795 IS - 17 JF - Ecology and Evolution TI - Green beards in the light of indirect genetic effects VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The Regge symmetry is a set of remarkable relations between two tetrahedra whose edge lengths are related in a simple fashion. It was first discovered as a consequence of an asymptotic formula in mathematical physics. Here, we give a simple geometric proof of Regge symmetries in Euclidean, spherical, and hyperbolic geometry. AU - Akopyan, Arseniy AU - Izmestiev, Ivan ID - 6793 IS - 5 JF - Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society SN - 00246093 TI - The Regge symmetry, confocal conics, and the Schläfli formula VL - 51 ER - TY - GEN AU - Ruess, Jakob AU - Pleska, Maros AU - Guet, Calin C AU - Tkačik, Gašper ID - 9786 TI - Supporting text and results ER -