Modelling Self-Organisation

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• Jeremy Green-King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
• Monday 25 November 2024, 14:30-15:30
• Online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Jia CHEN.

Gastruloids, which model formation of the primary body axis of vertebrate embryos, turn themselves from spheres into rods, breaking symmetry to organise cell rearrangements known as convergent extension (CE). Gastruloid elongation demonstrates that CE is, or can be, entirely self-organising, and that self-organising mechanisms are embedded in this, and likely others of the many instances of CE in development. Classically, self-organisation in biology involves Turing Reaction-Diffusion (RD) patterning by diffusible morphogens. We have explored the possibility that a completely different, non-RD-based, self-organisation principle for symmetry-breaking by CE could exist, namely polarity-propagating mechanical feedback, for which there is experimental evidence at the single-cell level. Using in silico modelling, we show that extremely simple rules for mechanical interactions are sufficient to organise convergent extension. Thus, although Turing himself chose to consider only chemical morphogenesis, mechanical self-organisation seems likely to be involved in CE, either orthogonal to RD or providing a form of “double assurance” (robustness-enhancing redundancy).

Join the Zoom with the link: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/87503254733 Meeting ID: 875 0325 4733

This talk is part of the Morphogenesis Seminar Series series.

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• Graduate-Seminars
• Morphogenesis Seminar Series
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