Guillaume Salbreux

Epithelial folds and flows

Shape changes of a biological tissue are determined by mechanical stresses acting within the tissue cells. To understand tissue morphogenesis, cellular scale processes must be related to flows and three-dimensional deformations occurring at the tissue scale. Here I will discuss how the shape of epithelia can be described from cellular models and from an active surface theory. I will discuss how early pancreatic tumours in mice can be understood from the redistribution of apico-basal forces in pancreatic cells. I will also discuss how analysis of movies of developing tissues can allow to relate tissue-scale flows to cellular events, using the example of growth arrest in the Drosophila histoblast nest.