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Gene expression in all organisms is controlled by short DNA and RNA sequences called cis-regulatory elements (CREs). Proteins in the cellular milieu bind to nucleic acid sequences present within CREs, interact with one another, and thus form macromolecular complexes that modulate the expression of nearby genes.

Active materials such as bacteria, molecular motors and eukaryotic cells continuously transform chemical energy taken from their surroundings to mechanical work.

Active processes in living systems create a novel class of non-equilibrium material composed of many interacting parts that individually consume energy and collectively generate motion or mechanical stress.

One of the characteristic features of many marine dinoflagellates is their bioluminescence, which lights up nighttime breaking waves or seawater sliced
by a ship’s prow. While the internal biochemistry of light production by these microorganisms is well established, the manner by which fluid shear or mechanical

Simple organisms manage to thrive in complex environments. Remembering information about the environment is key to take decisions. Physarum polycephalum excels as a giant unicellular eukaryote being even able to solve optimisation problems despite the lack of a nervous system.

An animal eye is only as efficient as the organism’s behavioral constraints demand it to be. Efficient coding has been a successful organizational principle in vision, and to make a more general theory, behavioral, mechanistic, and even evolutionary constraints need to be added to this framework.

The metabolic function of microbial communities emerges through a complex hierarchy of genome-encoded processes, from gene expression to interactions between diverse taxa. Therefore, a central challenge for microbial ecology is deciphering how genomic structure determines metabolic function in communities.

When experimenting with a large pool of species, a common problem is to determine a priori whether a certain subset of species can coexist when co-cultured. We propose a simple statistical model in which a number of species assemblages are observed, and the coexistence of novel assemblages is predicted out-of-fit.