Related papers: Precision of morphogen-driven tissue patterning du…
The phenomenon of cell sorting/segregation, by which cells organise spatially into clusters of specific cell type or function, is essential for tissue morphogenesis. This self-organization process involves an interplay between mechanical,…
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.…
The importance of individual cells in a developing multicellular organism is well known but precisely how the individual cellular characteristics of those cells collectively drive the emergence of robust, homeostatic structures is less well…
Embryonic tissues deform across broad spatial and temporal scales and relax stress through active rearrangements. A quantitative link between cell-scale activity, spatial forcing, and emergent tissue-scale mechanics remains incomplete.…
Spatial systems with heterogeneities are ubiquitous in nature, from precipitation, temperature and soil gradients controlling vegetation growth to morphogen gradients controlling gene expression in embryos. Such systems, generally described…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
MicroRNAs are extensively known for post-transcriptional gene regulation and pattern formation in the embryonic developmental stage. We explore the origin of these spatio-temporal patterns mathematically, considering three different motifs…
The concentration gradient of the Bicoid morphogen, which is established during the early stages of a Drosophila melanogaster embryonic development, determines the differential spatial patterns of gene expression and subsequent cell fate…
A macroscopic theory for describing cellular states during steady-growth is presented, which is based on the consistency between cellular growth and molecular replication, as well as the robustness of phenotypes against perturbations.…
Non-genetic heterogeneity is key to cellular decisions, as even genetically identical cells respond in very different ways to the same external stimulus, e.g., during cell differentiation or therapeutic treatment of disease. Strong…
Morphogenetic patterns are highly sophisticated dissipative structures. Are they governed by the same general mechanisms as chemical and hydrodynamic patterns? Turing's symmetry breaking and Wolpert's signalling provide alternative…
Maintaining tissue homeostasis requires appropriate regulation of stem cell differentiation. The Waddington landscape posits that gene circuits in a cell form a potential landscape of different cell types, wherein cells follow attractors of…
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…
Multipotent stem or progenitor cells undergo a sequential series of binary fate decisions, which ultimately generate the diversity of differentiated cells. Efforts to understand cell fate control have focused on simple gene regulatory…
The dispersal of cells from an initially constrained location is a crucial aspect of many physiological phenomena ranging from morphogenesis to tumour spreading. In such processes, the way cell-cell interactions impact the motion of single…
Phylogenetics uses alignments of molecular sequence data to learn about evolutionary trees relating species. Along branches, sequence evolution is modelled using a continuous-time Markov process characterised by an instantaneous rate…
Decisions in the cell that lead to its ultimate fate are important for cellular functions such as proliferation, growth, differentiation, development and death. Understanding this decision process is imperative for advancements in the…
The mammalian cortex is divided into architectonic and functionally distinct areas. There is growing experimental evidence that their emergence and development is controlled by both epigenetic and genetic factors. The latter were recently…
We examine a spatially discrete reaction diffusion model based on the interactions that create a periodic pattern in the Drosophila eye imaginal disc. This model is capable of generating a regular hexagonal pattern of gene expression behind…
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…