Dresden 2014 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 8: Posters: Active cell and tissue mechanics
BP 8.4: Poster
Montag, 31. März 2014, 17:30–19:30, P3
Morphological analysis of epithelial tissues — •Sara Kaliman1, Damir Vurnek1, Florian Rehfeldt2, and Ana-Sunčana Smith1 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg — 23rd Institute of Physics-Biophysics, University of Göttingen
Tissue growth is an inherently complex process, the details of which need to be understood not only from a biological standpoint but also in terms of the purely physical and geometrical aspects. In the most common scenario, epithelial tissue exhibits an increase in cell density during the growth of a colony until such time as a steady state is reached. Using the growth of MDCK II epithelial tissue as an example, we show that several millimeter-sized compartments organize radially, within the typically circular colony, over several days. To characterize these compartments, we study the intensity of the cell-cell and cell-substrate adhesion, as well as the structure of the cellular actin cortexes within each compartment. These data are correlated with information about the local cell density and division rate. Furthermore, we show that the cells within the colony divide the space according to a Voronoi tessellation, based on the shape of the cell nuclei. We use this realization to study the development of the morphological measures (the cell area, orientation, elongation and volume) in the process of densification. We find that as the cell density increases, the tissue structure approaches, but never reaches, a Centroidal Voronoi tessellation. This reorganization is achieved by positioning the nuclei closer to the centers of mass of the cell bodies and by decreasing the area associated with the intercellular contacts.