Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 17: Poster Session II
BP 17.81: Poster
Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 18:00–20:30, P4
Self-stimulated growth of epithelial model tissues — •Maja Milas1, Damir Vurnek2, Narmin Abasova2, Kevin Höllring2, and Ana-Sunčana Smith1,2 — 1Group for Computational Life Sciences, Division of Physical Chemistry, Ruđer Bošković, Institute, Zagreb, Croatia — 2PULS Group, Center for Advanced Materials and Processes, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
The growth of epithelium is one of the fundamental biological processes required for sustaining the life of multicellular organisms. This process can be studied in appreciable detail using model systems such as radially growing 2D MDCK colonies. Typically, epithelium grows from low densities to the homeostatic state while expanding laterally. This process has, in the past, been captured using Fisher Kolmogorov-like growth laws, where shortly after the establishment of homeostasis, the moving front reaches a constant velocity and density profile. However, in experiments presented herein, we show that the moving front continues to accelerate and expand for days after the steady state density is achieved in the center of the colony. This radial expansion cannot be captured by currently established models, even after introducing a highly non-linear growth term and recently proposed delays. We can, nonetheless, rationalize this growth scenario by introducing self-stimulation by an activator secreted and absorbed in a density-dependent manner and coupling it with the equation for the evolution of the density. Further work is necessary to identify the biochemical pathway regulating the effect of the activator.
Keywords: Fisher-Kolmogorov like dynamics; MDCK epithelium; chemotaxis; tissue growth; self-stimulation