Emergence of Asymmetry in Hydra Spheroids

Dietmar Oelz (The University of Queensland) #

Note that this seminar will take place in room 2/414 in Mathematikon! Seminar will start at 11:00!!! #

Tissue morphogenesis involves the self-organized creation of patterns and shapes. In many cases details of underlying mechanisms are elusive, yet an increasing amount of experimental data suggests that chemical morphogens and mechanical processes are strongly coupled.

Here, we develop and simulate a minimal model for the emergence of asymmetry in aggregates of the Hydra polyp based on mechanochemical coupling of surface stiffness and a morphogen concentration. We contrast this model with the classical morphogen patterning mechanisms based on Turing type reaction diffusion systems.

In analogy to this classical mechanism, we carry out the stability analysis of the lower dimensional toy model and identify minimal conditions for symmetry breaking. Our results suggest that mechanochemical pattern formation underlies symmetry breaking in Hydra.