University of Notre Dame/Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Biocomplexity/Center News

Robust multicellular structures and processes are crucial for the construction and function of higher organisms. In these systems large numbers of cells communicate through short and long-ranged interactions in order to achieve large-scale coherence. In this talk I will present a general framework for describing these systems, which is similar in spirit to many-body theory, which has been so successful in understanding coherent structures in physical systems. The framework provides some analytical insights into the behavior of multi-cellular systems, and also allows the construction of optimized off-lattice computer algorithms. If time allows, I will illustrate the latter in the context of early stages of chick embryogenesis, in particular the dynamics of primitive streak formation.


	Timothy Newman Department of Physics and Astronomy Arizona State University Modeling Multicellular Systems using Many-body Theory Robust multicellular structures and processes are crucial for the construction and function of higher organisms. In these systems large numbers of cells communicate through short and long-ranged interactions in order to achieve large-scale coherence. In this talk I will present a general framework for describing these systems, which is similar in spirit to many-body theory, which has been so successful in understanding coherent structures in physical systems. The framework provides some analytical insights into the behavior of multi-cellular systems, and also allows the construction of optimized off-lattice computer algorithms. If time allows, I will illustrate the latter in the context of early stages of chick embryogenesis, in particular the dynamics of primitive streak formation.

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