Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 3: Tissue Mechanics I

BP 3.1: Hauptvortrag

Montag, 9. März 2026, 09:30–10:00, BAR/0205

The unreasonable effectiveness of computational models in biological patterning and morphogenesis — •Michel Milinkovitch — Dept. of Genetics & Evolution, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

I will discuss how vertebrate skin colours and skin appendages (scales, feathers, hairs) are spatially patterned through Turing and mechanical instabilities. First, I will show that Reaction-diffusion (RD) models are particularly effective for understanding skin colour patterning at the macroscopic scale, without the need to parametrise the profusion of variables at the microscopic scales. I suggest that the efficiency of RD is due to its intrinsic ability to exploit continuous colour states and the relations among growth, skin-scale geometries, and the (Turing) pattern intrinsic length scale. Second, I will show how drug treatments can permanently trigger transitions between scale appendage types or even between chemical and mechanical self-organisation. Third, I will show that a three-dimensional mechanical model, integrating growth and material properties of embryonic skin layers, captures most of the dynamics and steady-state pattern of head scales in crocodiles and tortoises. Fourth, I will show that the spectacular morphogenesis of the strongly overlapping snake scales can be recapitulated with a mechanical model integrating tissue plasticity and active material properties. These studies indicate that Biology, despite its 'messy' nature (with its unmanageable profusion of cellular and molecular variables) can be efficiently and quantitatively investigated mathematically, including with simple phenomenological models.