Related papers: Geometry, Analysis and Morphogenesis: Problems and…
The process of morphogenesis, which can be defined as an evolution of the form of an organism, is one of the most intriguing mysteries in the life sciences. It is clear, that gene expression patterns cannot explain the development of the…
Brain morphology is shaped by genetic and mechanical factors and is linked to biological development and diseases. Its fractal-like features, regional anisotropy, and complex curvature distributions hinder quantitative insights in medical…
Cities are living organisms. They are out of equilibrium, open systems that never stop developing and sometimes die. The local geography can be compared to a shell constraining its development. In brief, a city's current layout is a step in…
Modeling the spontaneous evolution of morphology in natural systems and its preservation by proportionate growth remains a major scientific challenge. Yet, it is conceivable that if the basic mechanisms of growth and the coupled kinetic…
Morphogenesis emerges from dynamic feedback among geometry, mechanics, and chemistry; however, disentangling these contributions in living systems remains challenging. Here, we focus on the interplay between geometry and mechanics by…
We introduce a formalism for the geometry of eukaryotic cells and organisms.Cells are taken to be star-convex with good biological reason. This allows for a convenient description of their extent in space as well as all manner of cell…
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…
The buckling of a soft elastic sample under growth or swelling has highlighted a new interest in materials science, morphogenesis, and biology or physiology. Indeed, the change of mass or volume is a common fact of any living species, and…
A central question in developmental biology is how size and position are determined. The genetic code carries instructions on how to control these properties in order to regulate the pattern and morphology of structures in the developing…
Plant morphogenesis relies on dynamic growth deformations at the cell and tissue scales driven by osmotic fluxes. A mechanistic understanding of this phenomenon demands a physical framework that integrates cell imbibition, tissue mechanics,…
Deformations of cell sheets during morphogenesis are driven by developmental processes such as cell division and cell shape changes. In morphoelastic shell theories of development, these processes appear as variations of the intrinsic…
The surrounding world surprises us by the beauty and variety of complex shapes that emerge from nanometric to macroscopic scales. Natural or manufactured materials (sandstones, sedimentary rocks and cement), colloidal solutions (proteins…
The innumerable shapes of plant leaves present a challenge to the explanatory power of biophysical theory. A model is needed that can produce these shapes with a small set of parameters. This paper presents a simple model of leaf shape…
Growth-elasticity is a powerful model framework for understanding complex shape development in soft biological tissues. At each instant, by mapping how continuum building blocks have grown geometrically and how they respond elastically to…
One of the major challenges in biology concerns the integration of data across length and time scales into a consistent framework: how do macroscopic properties and functionalities arise from the molecular regulatory networks - and how can…
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.…
Morphoelasticity represents a foundational theory for tracing back growth, remodelling, and morphogenesis, yet crucial challenges persist. A unified growth law -- independent of a priori assumptions about constitutive relations or specified…
Localized deformation patterns are a common motif in morphogenesis and are increasingly finding widespread applications in materials science, for instance as memory devices. Here we describe the emergence of spatially localized deformations…
The generation of anisotropic shapes occurs during morphogenesis of almost all organisms. With the recent renewal of the interest in mechanical aspects of morphogenesis, it has become clear that mechanics contributes to anisotropic forms in…
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…