A mathematical principle that explains the formation of cells, tissues, and organs | flag | directions | trends

A complex mathematical principle explains how cells with each other to form tissues first and then MembersIt was discovered by an international team of scientists and thus opened another door to the formation of tissues and organs in an artificial way.

Researchers from several countries have published in the journal cell system The conclusions of the study, in which they used the fruit fly as a model, which allowed them to understand how organs are formed during embryonic development and the diseases associated with this process.

The discovery was led by Institute of Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), which is a mixed center of Supreme Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and the University of Valencia (UV)and the Biomedical Institute of Seville (IBiS) – CSIC Center, and University Hospital Virgen del Rossio and University of Seville– , Johns Hopkins University in the United States and the University of the Basque Country also participated.

In 2018, the same international team published the conclusions of a study that showed that epithelial cells, those that help protect organs, can take on a geometric shape during the formation of these hitherto uncharacterized organs: the scutoid.

“The reliance of cells on this geometry is due to the energy savings it takes when packing to form tissues when there is a certain level of curvature, for example, when forming a fold in a tissue”Lewis explained. Maria Escuderofrom IBiS, according to CSIC.

This investigation included ‘Great paradigm shift’According to Escudero, who specified that until then the epithelium had always been studied using mathematical concepts to describe its organization in two dimensions, something related to the communication between cells and how they communicate with each other to properly form organs.

“So we show that epithelial cells can have complex shapes in three dimensions, like scutoids, and that cells and organs are also three-dimensional, and we wonder if there are mathematical or biophysical principles in three dimensions.”Explanation of the researcher.

Now, by combining experiments with fly tissue with computational models of tubular tissue, researchers have come up with a biophysical model that links for the first time the tissue engineering and physical properties of cells with how they relate to each other.

Detective Javier Busettafrom I2SysBio, to the analogy to explain the scope of the scientific advances they published.

“Anthropologist Robin Dunbar determined that humans have an average of five close friends that give them different social and personality factors. At the cellular level, our article revealed that there is an equivalent principle, which concludes that the number of a cell’s close neighbors, that is, its close friends, is in this case determined by the geometry of The tissue and its active relationships.“.

Thus, taking into account a series of biological, biological and engineering considerations, the researchers discovered that the more bonds an epithelial cell has with others, the more energy it needs to create new connections with other cells, whereas if it is weakly linked with other cells. Neighbors, the cell needs less energy to establish this connection.

The scientists altered the tissue, reducing adhesion between cells to put their model to the test, and thus came to these conclusions.