2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Pattern formation in developmental biology and cell-cell interaction
| Project/Area Number |
12834010
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Institution | KYUSHU UNIVERSITY |
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Principal Investigator |
MOCHIZUKI Atsushi Faculty of Science, KYUSHU UNIVERSITY, Assistant Professor, 大学院・理学研究院, 助手 (10304726)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
IWASA Yo Faculty of Science, KYUSHU UNIVERSITY, Professor, 大学院・理学研究院, 教授 (70176535)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2000 – 2001
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| Keywords | Mathematical Biology / Developmental Biology / Theoretical biology / Applied Mathematics / Biophysics |
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| Research Abstract |
In fish retinas, cone photoreceptor cells are arranged in two-dimensional regular patterns, called cone mosaics. In the zebrafish retina, four subtypes of cone cells, which are maximally sensitive to different wave length of light, appear in quasi-periodic patterns. The pattern formation mechanism is unknown. Here, I develop a mathematical model to examine whether cell adhesion can explain the formation of the zebrafish mosaic. I assume that the movement of differentiated cells is responsible for generating the pattern, and that the movement rate is modified by cell adhesion. The pattern is formed if the magnitudes of cell adhesion between cell types are chosen appropriately. I determine the conditions of cell adhesion for generating the pattern. I also compare this cell rearrangement model with a previously studied model in which the pattern is formed by transitions of cell fate. The condition for obtaining the focal pattern is looser in the cell rearrangement model than in the fate transition model.
Formation of periodic patterns in animal skins has been explained by the reaction-diffusion (RD) system proposed by Turing (1). However, there is no explanation for mechanism of directionality of stripes. Here, we propose a hypothesis that anisotropy of diffusion may be caused by skin-structure. We compared the pattern formation of two species of Genicanthus that share almost identical shapes except for direction. Computational analysis shows that adding diffusion-anisotropy to the RD model can explain all the features observed in Genicanthus. From the analyses, a small change in skin-structure is enough to cause a marked change in stripe-direction.
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