BBE- Moore Scholar Seminar - Boris Shraiman | Monday, February 5, 2024 at 12 pm

BBE- Moore Scholar Seminar

Monday, February 5, 2024 at 12 pm

Chen 100

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11:30 Reception in Chen Lobby

Boris Shraiman, Professor

Theoretical Physics & Biology

UC – Santa Barbara

Faculty Host: Elliot Meyerowitz

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"Mechanics in Morphogenesis"

Morphogenesis is a developmental process through which plants and animals acquire their shape and form. While Developmental Biology has identified many of the key genes and cellular mechanisms of morphogenesis, the question of how the genetically encoded program of development defines the shape of the organism that it generates remains an open problem. This talk will focus on the interplay of physical forces and genetically encoded regulation that underly morphogenic processes. Specifically, the talk will describe how mechanical self-organization on cellular scale acts to convert spatial patterns of developmental gene expression into controlled transformation of tissue shape. We will see that i) simple ideas from Physics go far in explaining non-trivial behavior of tissues, and that ii) "active mechanics" encountered in tissue morphogenesis pushes the envelope of continuum mechanics beyond what we have learned from textbooks.