Ala Trusina

Cell polarity ㅡ a driver of morphological diversity and robustness?
 

Despite continual renewal and damage, a multicellular organism is able to maintain its complex morphology. How is this stability compatible with the complexity and diversity of living forms?

Looking for answers at the protein level may be limiting as diverging protein sequences can result in similar morphologies. Inspired by the progressive role of apical-basal and planar cell polarity in development, we propose that stability, complexity, and diversity are emergent properties in populations of proliferating polarized cells.

We support our hypothesis by a theoretical approach, developed to effectively capture both types of polar cell adhesions. When applied to specific cases of development – gastrulation and the origins of folds and tubes – our theoretical tool suggests experimentally testable predictions pointing to the strength of polar adhesion, restricted directions of cell polarities, and the rate of cell proliferation to be major determinants of morphological diversity and stability.

About Ala Trusina's research

Life is a collection of processes on many scales: milliseconds to centuries, nanometres to kilometres. As our capacity for information processing is finite, we naturally zoom in and out between these scales to build a mental model of the world: We pick up a few key elements and coarse-grain the details. In my research, I use a similar approach of a coarse-grained modelling to capture complex biological phenomena.

While the main focus of our research is on common logic of stress response systems, we are gradually expanding into the field of stem cell differentiation (in collaboration with our colleagues at Stem Phys).

This text is taken from Ala's homepage at the Copenhagen university. More information about the talk will come soon!

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