Related papers: The Control of Lung Branching Morphogenesis
This paper proposes an original theory of aging of multicellular organisms. The cells of multicellular organisms, in contrast to unicellular organisms, are burdened with a two- part genome: housekeeping and specialized (multicellular),…
A fundamental task in developmental biology is to identify the mechanisms which drive morphogenesis. In many cases, pattern formation is driven by the positional information determined by both the gradient of maternal factors and hard-wired…
Despite being of vital importance to the immune system, the mechanism by which cells engulf relatively large solid particles during phagocytosis is still poorly understood. From movies of neutrophil phagocytosis of polystyrene beads, we…
Morphogens are secreted signaling molecules that mediate tissue patterning and growth of embryonic tissues. They are secreted in a localized region and spread through the tissue to form a graded concentration profile. We present a…
The deformation of cellular membranes regulates trafficking processes, such as exocytosis and endocytosis. Classically, the Helfrich continuum model is used to characterize the forces and mechanical parameters that cells tune to accomplish…
Unlike other tissue types, like epithelial tissue, which consist of cells with a much more homogeneous structure and function, the nervous tissue spans in a complex multilayer environment whose topographical features display a large…
The topology and form finding of tensegrity structures have been studied extensively since the introduction of the tensegrity concept. However, most of these studies address topology and form separately, where the former represented a…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
During morphogenesis, a featureless convex cerebellum develops folds. As it does so, the cortex thickness is thinnest at the crest (gyri) and thickest at the trough (sulci) of the folds. This observation cannot be simply explained by…
We investigate the long-time evolution of branching diffusion processes (starting with a finite number of particles) in inhomogeneous media. The qualitative behavior of the processes depends on the intensity of the branching. In the…
Morphogenesis, the process of growth and shape formation in biological tissues, is driven by complex interactions between mechanical, biochemical, and genetic factors. Traditional models of biological growth often rely on the concept of…
Organogenesis is a tightly regulated process that has been studied experimentally for decades. We are developing mechanistic models for the morphogenesis of limbs, lungs, and kidneys with a view to integrate available knowledge and to…
We study the morphology of a fluid membrane in spherical confinement. When the area of the membrane is slightly larger than the area of the outer container, a single axisymmetric invagination is observed. For higher area, self-contact…
Animal morphogenesis involves complex tissue deformation processes, which require tight control over tissue rheology. Yet, it remains insufficiently understood how tissue rheology results from the interplay between cellular packing and…
A living cell uses long tubular appendages for locomotion and sensory purposes. Hence, assembling and maintaining a protrusion of correct length is crucial for its survival and overall performance. Usually the protrusions lack the machinery…
As cancer advances, cells often spread from the primary tumor to other parts of the body and form metastases. This is the main cause of cancer related mortality. Here we investigate a conceptually simple model of metastasis formation where…
We study the effect of chemotactic signaling among mesenchymal cells. We show that the particular physiology of the mesenchymal cells allows one-dimensional collapse in contrast to the case of bacteria, and that the mesenchymal…
Membrane tubulation is a ubiquitous process that occurs both at the plasma membrane and on the membranes of intracellular organelles. These tubulation events are known to be mediated by forces applied on the membrane either due to motor…
3D reconstruction of pulmonary segments plays an important role in surgical treatment planning of lung cancer, which facilitates preservation of pulmonary function and helps ensure low recurrence rates. However, automatic reconstruction of…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…