Bacterial Physiology and Persistence
When an antibiotic is applied to a large population of antibiotic-sensitive bacterial cells, a subpopulation of cells tolerant to the antibiotic almost always appear, which are called persisters. Persisters are different from antibiotic resistant cells, because the progenies of the persisters are still sensitive to the same antibiotic: persisters are caused by phenotypic heterogeneity, that reflects stochasticity in the system.
Phage-Bacteria interaction in space
Phage plaque morphology tells a lot about the phage-bacteria interaction.
Through a quantitative modeling with closely related experiments, we reveal how the spatial structures are formed and how the space affects the phage-bacteria interaction. As modeling tools, we use individual based model with mechanical cell-cell interactions as well as reaction-diffusion type models.
Species competition and diversity
We use Lotoka-Volterra equations to stochastic lattice models to address how various types of species competitions affect emergence and coexistence of diversity.
Complex systems and statistical physics
We are interested in various collective phenomena, where rich behaviors emerge from elements or agents interacting with simple rules.