Multiscale modelling of epithelial tissue homeostasis and repair

Poster contribution for the CNRS - Jacques Monod Conference "Building, repairing and evolving biological tissues" held in Roscoff, France on September 13-17, 2015 (http://www.cnrs.fr/insb/cjm/2015/Vincent_e.html). This poster is based on joint work with Jochen Kursawe, Fergus Cooper and Ruth Baker at the University of Oxford and Jeremy Zartman, Cody Narciso and Pavel Brodskiy at the University of Notre Dame. Poster title: Multiscale modelling of epithelial tissue homeostasis and repair Poster abstract: The movement and organization of epithelial tissues plays a central role during development, growth, disease and wound healing. These processes occur as a result of cell adhesion, migration, division, differentiation and death, and involve multiple processes acting at the cellular and molecular level. Alongside experimental approaches, mathematical and computational modelling can help us understand what factors are involved in regulating cell- and tissue-level behaviour, and how this can go wrong. I describe our work to develop and apply multiscale modelling approaches to understand aspects of epithelial dynamics in several settings, including tissue size control in the Drosophila embryonic epidermis and tissue self-renewal and response to perturbation in the mammalian gut. I highlight the biological insights gained through this work, as well as ongoing challenges associated with such multiscale modelling approaches. Here are full details of the references listed in the poster: 1. J. Kursawe, P. Brodskiy, J. Zartman, R. Baker, A. Fletcher. Capabilities and limitations of tissue size control through passive mechanical forces. bioRxiv doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/023184 2. A. Fletcher, M. Osterfield, R. Baker and S. Shvartsman (2014). Vertex models of epithelial morphogenesis. Biophys. J. 106:2291-2304.3. A. Fletcher, J. Osborne, P. Maini and D. Gavaghan (2013). Implementing vertex dynamics models of cell populations in biology within a consistent computational framework. Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol. 113(2):299-326.4. C. Narciso, P. Brodskiy, G. Garston, R. Baker, A. Fletcher, J. Zartman (2015). Patterning of wound-induced intercellular Ca2+ flashes in a developing epithelium. Phys. Biol. 12(5):056005.5. G. Mirams, C. Arthurs, M. Bernabeu, R. Bordas, J. Cooper, A. Corrias, Y. Davit, S-J. Dunn, A. Fletcher, D. Harvey, M. Marsh, J. Osborne, P. Pathmanathan, J. Pitt-Francis, J. Southern, N. Zemzemi and D. Gavaghan (2013). Chaste: an open source C++ library for computational physiology and biology. PLoS Comput. Biol. 9:e1002970.6. J. Osborne, M. Bernabeu, M. Bruna, B. Calderhead, J. Cooper, N. Dalchau, S.-J. Dunn, A. Fletcher, R. Freeman, D. Groen, B. Knapp, G.J. McInerny, G. Mirams, J. Pitt-Francis, B. Sengupta, D. Wright, C. Yates, D.JGavaghan, S. Emmott and C. Deane (2014). Ten simple rules for effective computational research. PLOS Comput. Biol. 10(3):e1003506.