Biomathematics Seminar – Berta Verd Fernandez (University of Oxford)

Assumptions and abstractions shaping our understanding of pattern formation.

Mathematical modelling has long been used to understand embryological phenomena, and perhaps nowhere more successfully than in the study of developmental pattern formation. One prevailing assumption in our models of pattern formation to date is that the role of cell movements is not generative and can be safely ignored, even though molecular patterns are often established in tissues undergoing morphogenesis where extensive cell rearrangements are taking place. I will argue that in order to understand the formation of molecular patterns and importantly, their evolvability, moving forward we should take the role of cell movements into account explicitly. I will finish outlining a new methodology for reverse-engineering GRNs driving pattern formation in developing tissues with extensive cell movements, and what we have learnt by applying it to the developing zebrafish tailbud.