Related papers: Organ-specific Branching Morphogenesis
Epithelia form protective barriers in multicellular organisms. To maintain homeostasis, they must be able to regenerate and heal damaged areas. This occurs through collective cell migration, during which finger-like protrusions commonly…
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.…
Growth pattern dynamics lie at the heart of morphogenesis. Here, we investigate the growth of plant leaves. We compute the conformal transformation that maps the contour of a leaf at a given stage onto the contour of the same leaf at a…
Space-saving design is a requirement that is encountered in biological systems and the development of modern technological devices alike. Many living organisms dynamically pack their polymer chains, filaments or membranes inside of…
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…
Many morphogenetic processes involve mechanical rearrangement of epithelial tissues that is driven by precisely regulated cytoskeletal forces and cell adhesion. The mechanical state of the cell and intercellular adhesion are not only the…
Branched structures that evolve over time critically determine the function of various natural and engineered systems, including growing vasculature, neural arborization, pulmonary networks such as lungs, river basins, power distribution…
Epithelial tissues play a fundamental role in various morphogenetic events during development and early embryogenesis. Although epithelial monolayers are often modeled as two-dimensional (2D) elastic surfaces, they distinguish themselves…
Lotus leaves floating on water usually experience short-wavelength edge wrinkling that decays toward the center, while the leaves growing above water normally morph into a global bending cone shape with long rippled waves near the edge.…
Brain organoids recapitulate a number of brain properties, including neuronal diversity. However, do they recapitulate brain structure? Using a hydrodynamic description for cell nuclei as particles interacting initially via an effective,…
Cell shape is determined by a balance of intrinsic properties of the cell as well as its mechanochemical environment. Inhomogeneous shape changes underly many morphogenetic events and involve spatial gradients in active cellular forces…
Morphogenesis involves complex shape changes of biological tissues. Yet, tissue shape changes depend on tissue rheology, which in turn arises from the interplay of large numbers of cells. Here, we link cell- and tissue-scale mechanics by…
Autophagy is an intracellular degradation process that employs complex membrane dynamics to isolate and break down cellular components. However, many unanswered questions remain concerning remodeling of autophagic membranes. Here, we focus…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Epithelial morphogenesis, a signature problem of tissue biology and tissue mechanics, continues to inspire biologists and physicists alike. Many treatments focus on tissue fluidization, apical/basal ratio changes, or mechanical…
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…
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…
Rapid advance of experimental techniques provides an unprecedented in-depth view into complex developmental processes. Still, little is known on how the complexity of multicellular organisms evolved by elaborating developmental programs and…
The formation of microparticles requires the bending of the plasma membrane away from the cytosol. The capcity of the cell membrane to form a microparticle, and the rate of membrane deformation, are controlled by multiple factors, including…
We present a general theoretical framework to discuss mechanisms of morphogen transport and gradient formation in a cell layer. Trafficking events on the cellular scale lead to transport on larger scales. We discuss in particular the case…