title: A mathematical model to study the dynamics of epithelial cellular networks.
abstract: Epithelia are sheets of connected cells that are essential across the animal kingdom. Experimental observations suggest that the dynamical behavior of many single-layered epithelial tissues has strong analogies with that of specific mechanical systems, namely large networks consisting of point masses connected through spring-damper elements and undergoing the influence of active and dissipating forces. Based on this analogy, this work develops a modeling framework to enable the study of the mechanical properties and of the dynamic behavior of large epithelial cellular networks. The model is built first by creating a network topology that is extracted from the actual cellular geometry as obtained from experiments, then by associating a mechanical structure and dynamics to the network via spring-damper elements. This scalable approach enables running simulations of large network dynamics: the derived modeling framework in particular is predisposed to be tailored to study general dynamics (for example, morphogenesis) of various classes of single-layered epithelial cellular networks. In this contribution, we test the model on a case study of the dorsal epithelium of the Drosophila melanogaster embryo during early dorsal closure (and, less conspicuously, germband retraction).
authors.affiliation: Delft Center for Systems and Control, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2 (3mE building), 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands. a.abate@tudelft.nl
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Abate
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vincent
authors.forename: Roel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dobbe
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Silletti
authors.forename: Neal
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Master
authors.forename: Jeffrey D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Axelrod
authors.forename: Claire J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Tomlin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian; D004847:Epithelial Cells / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D004848:Epithelium / Q000502:physiology; D008954:Models, Biological; D009024:Morphogenesis / Q000502:physiology