Related papers: The Control of Branching Morphogenesis
Many biological networks grow by elongation of filaments that can branch and fuse -- typical examples include fungal mycelium or slime mold. These networks must simultaneously perform multiple tasks such as transport, exploration, and…
With the use of the general variational principle of self-organization of systems with varying constraints, namely the principle of dynamical harmonization of systems presented in the first work of the cycle, we advance an approach to the…
Although models of branching in arterial and bronchial trees often predict a dependence of bifurcation parameters on the scale of the bifurcating vessels, direct verifications of this dependence with data are uncommon. We compare…
Lateral organization in the plane of the plasma membrane is an important driver of biological processes. The past dozen years have seen increasing experimental support for the notion that lipid organization plays an important role in…
We show that very small-amplitude oscillations of a highly symmetric, spheric or cylindrical, interface (thin membrane) between two fluids can result in inhomogeneous instability and breaking of the interface symmetry: the frequency of the…
The interplay between bacterial chromosome organization and functions such as transcription and replication can be studied in increasing detail using novel experimental techniques. Interpreting the resulting quantitative data, however, can…
It is a common practice to describe branching random walks in terms of birth, death and walk of particles, which makes it easier to use them in different applications. The main results obtained for the models of symmetric continuous-time…
Proper lung functioning requires not only a correct structure of the conducting airway tree, but also the simultaneous development of smooth muscles and vasculature. Lung branching morphogenesis is strongly stereotyped and involves the…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
In embryonic development, programmed cell shape changes are essential for building functional organs, but in many cases the mechanisms that precisely regulate these changes remain unknown. We propose that fluid-like drag forces generated by…
Natural plants are exemplars of adaptation through self-organisation and collective decision making. As such, they provide a rich source of inspiration for adaptive mechanisms in artificial systems. Plant growth - a structure development…
The mechanism by which cells measure the dimension of the organ in which they are embedded, and slow down their growth when the final size is reached, is a long-standing problem of developmental biology. The role of mechanics in this…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
Plant organ outgrowth superficially appears like the continuous mechanical deformation of a sheet of cells. Yet, how precisely cells as individual mechanical entities can act to morph a tissue reliably and efficiently into three dimensions…
We discuss shape profiles emerging in inhomogeneous growth of squeezed tissues. Two approaches are used simultaneously: i) conformal embedding of two-dimensional domain with hyperbolic metrics into the plane, and ii) a pure energetic…
A large variety of real systems are composed by entities in relationships which can be represented by networks. In many of these systems, elements are embedded in the space and location information impacts properties and evolution. Local…
Accurately determining and classifying the structure of complex networks is the focus of much current research. One class of network of particular interest are metabolic pathways, which have previously been studied from a graph theoretical…
The study of organoids, artificially grown cell aggregates with the functionality and small-scale anatomy of real organs, is one of the most active areas of research in biology and biophysics, yet the basic physical origins of their…
Cell fate decisions emerge as a consequence of a complex set of gene regulatory networks. Models of these networks are known to have more parameters than data can determine. Recent work, inspired by Waddington's metaphor of a landscape, has…