The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis at 70

Oct 19, 2022, 10:00 AM → Oct 21, 2022, 11:50 PM America/New_York

Ingrid Daubechies Auditorium/2-IDA (162 5th Avenue)

Hayden Nunley, Pearson Miller, Shvartsman Stanislav

Seventy years ago, Alan Turing established a paradigm for biological self-organization: diffusion can destabilize spatially uniform concentrations of interacting chemicals, called morphogens. Though heavily debated at times, the quantitative mechanism proposed by Turing and his successors has, in many respects, come of age over the last two decades, thanks in no small part to experimental advances. Furthermore, a field of which he is the father, artificial intelligence, offers immense promise in identifying potential physical mechanisms from quantitative observations of morphogenetic processes.

In honor of the seventieth anniversary of this seminal contribution to theoretical biology, we aim to encourage discussion between experts across the many fields, including computer science, biology, physics, mathematics, and engineering, which have been touched by Turing’s influence. This conference will act not only as a retrospective but also as a clearinghouse for open problems in biological pattern formation.  

Wednesday, October 19

5:00 PM → 6:00 PM Looking back at Turing's paper

Speakers: Shvartsman Stanislav, Dr Siavash Golkar (Flatiron Institute), Pearson Miller

6:00 PM → 7:00 PM Opening reception

Thursday, October 20

8:00 AM → 9:00 AM BREAKFAST

9:00 AM → 9:20 AM Opening remarks for Turing Meeting

Speaker: Stas Shvartsman (Princeton University and Flatiron Institute)

9:20 AM → 9:50 AM The genesis of morphogenesis: Turing's place in the study of natural pattern formation

Speaker: Philip Ball

9:50 AM → 10:20 AM Complex and redundant mechanisms control hair follicle patterning

Speaker: Sarah Millar (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)

10:20 AM → 10:40 AM COFFEE

10:40 AM → 11:10 AM Hair follicle is nature's 3D printer: Self-organized principles for printing animal's fur

Speaker: Maksim Plikus (UC-Irvine)

11:10 AM → 11:40 AM Sfrp2 is a multifunctional regulator of rodent color patterns

Speaker: Matthew Johnson (Princeton University)

11:40 AM → 12:10 PM Single-cell analysis of tissue morphogenesis

Speaker: Qing Nie (UC-Irvine)

12:10 PM → 1:10 PM LUNCH

1:10 PM → 1:40 PM Understanding Turing pattern initiation: a multiscale approach

Speaker: Cyrill Muratov (Universita di Pisa)

1:40 PM → 2:10 PM Reconstituting morphogen gradients from the bottom up

Speaker: Pulin Li (MIT)

2:10 PM → 2:40 PM Emergence of self-organized patterns in a synthetic multicellular system

Speaker: Amit Landge (University of Konstanz)

2:40 PM → 3:00 PM COFFEE

3:00 PM → 3:30 PM Geometry and Genetics

Speaker: Eric Siggia (Rockefeller University)

3:30 PM → 4:00 PM Chemical Turing Patterns

Speaker: Sergey Semenov (Weizmann Institute of Science)

4:00 PM → 4:20 PM COFFEE

4:20 PM → 4:50 PM Mathematical-physical-chemical models, biological specificity, and genomic causality

Speaker: Ute Deichmann (Ben-Gurion)

5:00 PM → 6:30 PM POSTER SESSION

6:30 PM → 8:00 PM DINNER

Friday, October 21

8:00 AM → 9:00 AM BREAKFAST

9:00 AM → 9:30 AM Symmetry breaking during early mammalian development

Speaker: Eszter Posfai (Princeton University)

9:30 AM → 10:00 AM Illuminating the (uterine) path: from embryo movement to implantation

Speaker: Ripla Arora (Michigan State University)

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Patterning mechanisms in mammalian gastrulation

Speaker: Aryeh Warmflash (Rice University)

10:30 AM → 10:50 AM COFFEE

10:50 AM → 11:20 AM Reciprocal cell-ECM dynamics generate supracellular fluidity underlying spontaneous follicle patterning

Speaker: Karl Palmquist (Rockefeller University)

11:20 AM → 11:50 AM Self-centering patterns in in-vitro actomyosin networks

Speaker: Alex Mogilner (New York University)

11:50 AM → 12:50 PM LUNCH

12:50 PM → 1:20 PM Waves and gradients in zebrafish regeneration

Speaker: Stefano Di Talia (Duke University)

1:20 PM → 1:50 PM Oscillations, waves and patterning in vertebrate embryo axis segmentation

Speaker: Alexander Aulehla (EMBL)

1:50 PM → 2:10 PM COFFEE

2:10 PM → 2:40 PM Building pattern: finding molecular and physical design principles of patterning with in toto imaging in zebrafish

Speaker: Sean Megason (Harvard University)

2:40 PM → 3:10 PM Formation, robustness and scaling of morphogen gradients in a developing epithelium

Speaker: JP Vincent (Francis Crick Institute)

3:10 PM → 3:40 PM Patterning diversity of the Drosophila eggshell

Speaker: Nir Yakoby (Rutgers University)

3:40 PM → 4:00 PM COFFEE

4:00 PM → 4:30 PM Control of protein-based pattern formation via guiding cues

Speaker: Erwin Frey (LMU-Munich)

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Self-assembly under control in zebrafish oocyte development

Speaker: Yaniv Elkouby (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

5:00 PM → 5:30 PM Activity-driven self-organization for transport in living cells

Speaker: Michael Shelley (New York University and Flatiron Institute)

5:30 PM → 6:30 PM Concluding reception on roof