Related papers: Morphogen-regulated contact-mediated signaling bet…
Proper vertebrae formation relies on a tissue-wide oscillator called the segmentation clock. Individual cellular oscillators in the presomitic mesoderm are modulated by intercellular coupling and external signals, leading to the propagation…
In most vertebrate species, the body axis is generated by the formation of repeated transient structures called somites. This spatial periodicity in somitogenesis has been related to the temporally sustained oscillations in certain mRNAs…
Embryonic development involves pattern formation characterized by the emergence of spatially localized domains characterized by distinct cell fates resulting from differential gene expression. The boundaries demarcating these domains are…
Development in multi-cellular organisms is marked by a high degree of spatial organization of the cells attaining distinct fates in the embryo. We show that receptor-ligand interaction between cells in close physical proximity adaptively…
Rhythmic and sequential segmentation of the embryonic body plan is a vital developmental patterning process in all vertebrate species. However, a theoretical framework capturing the emergence of dynamic patterns of gene expression from the…
Morphogenesis of complex body shapes is reproducible despite the noise inherent in the underlying morphogenetic processes. However, how these morphogenetic processes work together to achieve this reproducibility remains unclear. Here, we…
We present a COMSOL Multiphysics implementation of a continuum model for directed cell migration, a key mechanism underlying tissue self-organization and morphogenesis. The model is formulated as a partial integro-differential equation…
The fundamental biological processes of development of tissues and organs in multicellular organisms is governed by various signaling molecules, which are called morphogens. It is known that spatial and temporal variations in concentration…
One of the many ways cells transmit information within their volume is through steady spatial gradients of different proteins. However, the mechanism through which proteins without any sources or sinks form such single-cell gradients is not…
Rhythmic and sequential subdivision of the elongating vertebrate embryonic body axis into morphological somites is controlled by an oscillating multicellular genetic network termed the segmentation clock. This clock operates in the…
We show that when cells communicate by contact-mediated interactions, heterogeneity in cell shapes and sizes leads to qualitatively distinct collective behavior in the tissue. For inter-cellular coupling that implements lateral inhibition,…
Morphogenesis, the process by which an adult organism emerges from a single cell, has fascinated humans for a long time. Modelling this process can provide novel insights into development and the principles that orchestrate the…
The clock and wavefront paradigm is arguably the most widely accepted model for explaining the embryonic process of somitogenesis. According to this model, somitogenesis is based upon the interaction between a genetic oscillator, known as…
Successful biological development via spatial regulation of cell differentiation relies on action of multiple signaling molecules that are known as morphogens. It is now well established that signaling molecules create non-uniform…
We discuss the formation of graded morphogen profiles in a cell layer by nonlinear transport phenomena, important for patterning developing organisms. We focus on a process termed transcytosis, where morphogen transport results from binding…
Establishing sharp and correctly positioned boundaries in spatial gene expression patterns is a central task, both in developmental and synthetic biology. We consider situations where a global morphogen gradient provides positional…
Most models of biological pattern formation are simulated on continuous domains even though cells are discrete objects that provide internal boundaries to the diffusion of regulatory components. In our previous papers on simulating…
Spatial distributions of morphogens provide positional information in developing systems, but how the distributions are established and maintained remains an open problem. Transport by diffusion has been the traditional mechanism, but…
The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence…
Based on a recently proposed non-equilibrium mechanism for spatial pattern formation [cond-mat/0312366] we study how morphogenesis can be controlled by locally coupled discrete dynamical networks, similar to gene regulation networks of…