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Asymptote. The graph of a function with a horizontal (y = 0), vertical (x = 0), and oblique asymptote (purple line, given by y = 2 x). A curve intersecting an asymptote infinitely many times. In analytic geometry, an asymptote (/ ˈæsɪmptoʊt /) of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as one ...
Chemotaxis (from chemo- + taxis) is the movement of an organism or entity in response to a chemical stimulus. [1] Somatic cells, bacteria, and other single-cell or multicellular organisms direct their movements according to certain chemicals in their environment.
In biochemistry and pharmacology, the Hill equation refers to two closely related equations that reflect the binding of ligands to macromolecules, as a function of the ligand concentration. A ligand is "a substance that forms a complex with a biomolecule to serve a biological purpose" (ligand definition), and a macromolecule is a very large ...
The species–area relationship is usually constructed for a single type of organism, such as all vascular plants or all species of a specific trophic level within a particular site. It is rarely if ever, constructed for all types of organisms if simply because of the prodigious data requirements. It is related but not identical to the species ...
Fick's first law relates the diffusive flux to the gradient of the concentration. It postulates that the flux goes from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration, with a magnitude that is proportional to the concentration gradient (spatial derivative), or in simplistic terms the concept that a solute will move from a region of high concentration to a region of low ...
Bacterial motility is the ability of bacteria to move independently using metabolic energy. Most motility mechanisms that evolved among bacteria also evolved in parallel among the archaea. Most rod-shaped bacteria can move using their own power, which allows colonization of new environments and discovery of new resources for survival.
In an equation of the form y' = f (x, y), the isoclines are lines in the (x, y) plane obtained by setting f (x, y) equal to a constant. This gives a series of lines (for different constants) along which the solution curves have the same gradient. By calculating this gradient for each isocline, the slope field can be visualised; making it ...
The slope of this line is the specific growth rate of the organism, which is a measure of the number of divisions per cell per unit time. [5] The actual rate of this growth (i.e. the slope of the line in the figure) depends upon the growth conditions, which affect the frequency of cell division events and the probability of both daughter cells ...