Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 18: Tissue Mechanics
BP 18.12: Talk
Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 12:45–13:00, H44
Model of growth arrests and proportional growth inspired by axolotl limb regeneration — •Natalia Lyubaykina1,2, Dunja Knapp3, Pietro Tardivo4, Tatiana Sandoval-Guzmán3, Elly Tanaka4, and Benjamin M Friedrich1,2 — 1Cluster of Excellence 'Physics of Life', Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany — 2Center for Advancing Electronics, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany — 3CRTD/Center for Regenerative Therapies TU Dresden, Germany — 4Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Campus Vienna Biocenter, Vienna, Austria
Axolotl can regenerate lost limbs even as adults, posing the question of how the size of a regenerating limb is matched to a variable animal size. Two interacting morphogens, SHH and FGF8, regulate limb development and regeneration. Inspired by this biological example, we theoretically investigate general mechanisms of morphogen-controlled growth arrest and proportional growth. In the proposed model, tissue growth increases the spatial distance between both morphogen gradients, thus providing negative feedback that eventually arrests growth. We propose two distinct scaling scenarios of morphogen gradients: either dynamic scaling with regenerating blastema size, or static scaling with animal size. We show that only the latter ensures robust growth arrest and proportional growth. We compare theory predictions to experimental quantification of SHH and FGF8 dynamics at different time points of regeneration in different-sized animals, suggestive of scaling with animal size.
Keywords: Adaptive morphogenesis; Growth control; Morphogens; Gradient scaling; Reaction-diffusion model