Gerald L. Jones

Professor Emeritus,
Theoretical Physics

Research Interests

Professor Jones' research interests lie in the areas of statistical, mathematical and biological physics.

Recent research has concerned modeling cell movements in embryonic development. The gastrulation stage of embryonic development of many vertebrates is characterized by much cellular rearrangement resulting in the creation of axial structures. “Convergent extension” is a common and experimentally well studied type of such rearrangement. Our highly simplified modeling suggests that convergent extension can be understood by the same kind of energy arguments as used by Steinberg in the cell sorting process, provided that one assumes that cell-cell adhesion has a certain type of anisotropic property.

The process of convergent extension has been simulated using a Monte-Carlo driven Pott's model suggested by those used in successful cell-sorting simulations. The energy function for the system has several novel features. The required anisotropy of the cell-cell adhesion makes the simulation non-local on the scale of the cell size with an attendant increase in program complexity and CPU time. Our simulations are in good agreement with experiments on amphibian embryos.

Selected Publications

“Model of Convergent Extension in Animal Morphogenesis,” Mark Zajac, Gerald L. Jones, and James A. Glazier, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2022 (2000).

“Simulating convergent extension by way of anisotropic differential adhesion,” Mark Zajac, Gerald L. Jones, and James A. Glazier, Journal of Theoretical Biology 222/2, 247 (2003).

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