On September 17, 2009 Adam Sokolow will be leading a discussion on Oscillations and Transient Dynamics of Cell Shape at Low Reynolds Number.

Location: 4219 French Family Science Center

Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Abstract: We discuss current research in the characterization and role of cell dynamics in tissue in the fruit fly embryo. During the fruit fly embryo’s development, two flanking tissues in the shape of an eye are brought together via a third force-producing tissue (amnioserosa) in a process called Dorsal Closure. From confocal images we can follow cell shapes, more specifically, cross-sectional areas of the cells that comprise the amnioserosa. Dorsal Closure occurs over a couple of hours, during which these cells are gradually removed from the tissue as these cells are programmed to undergo a cell death (apoptosis). In addition to their transient existence, these cells exhibit faster time scale oscillations (on the order of minutes) in what is well accepted as a Low Reynolds environment. This is strongly suggestive of the existence of an active biological process. How these fast, cell level oscillations effects the larger scale tissue dynamics is an open research question and requires a physical and mathematical approach to solve. The talk will cover a brief explanation of the biological framework and the segmentation of confocal images to lead into our efforts to characterize the dynamics of the cells in tissue. The talk will end with a discussion of future research which will include a mapping of the force fields of the tissue and an attempt to approximate parameters of the inverse problem.