Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 23: Cell Motility and Migration (in vitro and in vivo)
BP 23.11: Talk
Thursday, March 29, 2007, 16:45–17:00, H43
Continuum Description of Growing Cellular Tissues — •Thomas Bittig1, Ortrud Wartlick2, Anna Kicheva2, Marcos González-Gaitán2, and Frank Jülicher1 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Str. 28, 01187 Dresden, Germany — 2Department of Biochemistry and Department of Molecular Biology, Geneva University, Sciences II, Quai Ernest-Ansermet 30, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland
During the development of multicellular organisms, organs grow to well-defined shapes and sizes. The mechanisms that coordinate the proliferation and movement of cells in growing tissues remain still unclear. In order to study cellular movement in a growing epithelium, we developed a continuum description which considers the time evolution of a local cell density in two or three dimensions. We describe the tissue as a viscous fluid in which active stresses are generated by cell division. We consider situations where cell division is randomly oriented and where a preferred orientation of cell division exists. We perform numerical studies of this macroscopic description using a discrete model on a cellular level. Our descriptions can be used as a basis for the study of the transport of signaling molecules through growing tissues as e.g. in the growing Drosophila wing disc, a precursor of the fly wing.