Morphogen gradients are regulated by porous media characteristics of the developing tissue
Abstract
This study demonstrates that realistic tissue geometries significantly influence morphogen behavior. The predicted normalized gradient is robust against changes in source and sink rates but sensitive to changes in the pore connectivity of the extracellular space.
Used in syntheses
Questions this source addresses
- How can chemicals that react and spread create a pattern?
- How do cells know where they are in a growing body?
- How does a living thing know what shape to grow into?
- How does auxin shape a growing plant?
- How does modeling developing tissue as a porous medium change predictions of morphogen gradient shape compared to simplified diffusion models?
- In what sense does tissue geometry tune morphogen gradient profiles during development, and what does this imply for treating morphogens as physical rather than purely chemical fields?
- What role do coupled partial differential equations play in capturing the bidirectional relationship between morphogen gradients and tissue architecture?
- Why are morphogen gradients robust to changes in source and sink rates but highly sensitive to pore connectivity of the extracellular space?