title: Spatio-temporal patterns in a mechanical model for mesenchymal morphogenesis.
abstract: We present an in-depth study of spatio-temporal patterns in a simplified version of a mechanical model for pattern formation in mesenchymal morphogenesis. We briefly motivate the derivation of the model and show how to choose realistic boundary conditions to make the system well-posed. We firstly consider one-dimensional patterns and carry out a nonlinear perturbation analysis for the case where the uniform steady state is linearly unstable to a single mode. In two-dimensions, we show that if the displacement field in the model is represented as a sum of orthogonal parts, then the model can be decomposed into two sub-models, only one of which is capable of generating pattern. We thus focus on this particular sub-model. We present a nonlinear analysis of spatio-temporal patterns exhibited by the sub-model on a square domain and discuss mode interaction. Our analysis show that when a two-dimensional mode number admits two or more degenerate mode pairs, the solution of the full nonlinear system of partial differential equations is a mixed mode solution in which all the degenerate mode pairs are represented in a frequency locked oscillation.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Mathematical Biology, Mathematical Institute, Oxford, England.
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Ngwa
authors.forename: P K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Maini
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005314:Embryonic and Fetal Development; D008648:Mesoderm / Q000166:cytology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009024:Morphogenesis