Model of mechanical interaction of mesenchyme and epithelium in living tissues

Abstract

Developmental biology describes how tissues, organs, and bodies are made from living cells. There exists a large body of biological data about developmental processes but there is still not ultimate understanding of how the whole orchestra of all involved processes is working. It is the place where mathematical modelling could help to create biologically relevant models of morphological development. The morphological development could be mathematically decomposed into three distinct but mutually interconnected parts, namely to mechanical response of tissues, signalling by chemicals, and switching of cells into different types by a gene regulatory network. This paper is focussed to the part dealing with mechanical interaction of growing mesenchyme and epithelium within a living tissue modelled by a set of nodes interconnected by deformable bars as in tensegrity models. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.