Symmetry breaking as an interdisciplinary concept unifying cell and developmental biology

The concept of “symmetry breaking” has become a mainstay of modern biology, yet you will not find a definition of this concept specific to biological systems in Wikipedia [...

Patterning and Morphogenesis From Cells to Organisms: Progress, Common Principles and New Challenges

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Correction: Computational Model Explains High Activity and Rapid Cycling of Rho GTPases within Protein Complexes

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correction curvature driven positioning of turing patterns in phase separating curved membranes

Correction for 'Curvature-driven positioning of Turing patterns in phase-separating curved membranes' by Giulio Vandin et al., Soft Matter, 2016, DOI: 10.1039/c6sm00340k

Stochastic contraction of myosin minifilaments drives evolution of microridge protrusion patterns in epithelial cells

Actin-based protrusions vary in morphology, stability, and arrangement on cell surfaces. Microridges are laterally elongated protrusions on mucosal epithelial cells, where they form evenly spaced, mazelike patterns that dynamically remodel by fission and fusion. To characterize how microridges form their highly ordered, subcellular patterns and investigate the mechanisms driving fission and fusion, we imaged microridges in the maturing skin of zebrafish larvae. After their initial development, microridge spacing and alignment became increasingly well ordered. Imaging F-actin and non-muscle myosin II (NMII) revealed that microridge fission and fusion were associated with local NMII activity in the apical cortex. Inhibiting NMII blocked fission and fusion rearrangements, reduced microridge density, and altered microridge spacing. High-resolution imaging allowed us to image individual NMII minifilaments in the apical cortex of cells in live animals, revealing that minifilaments are tethered to protrusions and often connect adjacent microridges. NMII minifilaments connecting the ends of two microridges fused them together, whereas minifilaments oriented perpendicular to microridges severed them or pulled them closer together. These findings demonstrate that as cells mature, cortical NMII activity orchestrates a remodeling process that creates an increasingly orderly microridge arrangement

Particle-based model of cellular morphogenesis in budding yeast

We apply Lagrangian particle method combined with the level-set method to model morphogenesis of budding yeast on the subcellular level. We model the biochemical reactions, anisotropic diffusion, membrane-cytoplasmic transport of proteins and introduction of new membrane material (exocytosis) that occur on the plasma membrane. Exocytosis results in protrusion of the membrane surface. Hence, to model these phenomena we need to solve a system of reaction-diffusion-advection equations on the evolving surface