Speaker: Konstantin Doubrovinski, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biophysics and Cell Biology
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Title: Physical aspects of Drosophila gastrulation
Abstract: Animal morphogenesis is a process in which simply organized epithelial tissues form animal organs with complex shape and function. In recent years, there has been a concentrated effort focused on studying animal morphogenesis, with many works reporting theoretical/modeling results meant to interpret experimental observations. However, any predictive claim about morphogenesis depends entirely on specific assumptions about material properties of embryonic tissues. Unfortunately, data on material properties of embryonic tissues are extremely scarce.
To address this, our lab has recently developed several experimental techniques that allow measuring mechanical properties of embryonic tissues, including ferrofluid droplets, bendable cantilevers and magnetic microbeads. Based on our data, we developed a comprehensive quantitative theory that describes the dynamics of epithelial tissue of the early Drosophila melanogaster embryo. Additionally, we applied this theory to study physical basis of ventral furrow formation in the fruit fly – a widely studied morphogenetic event that causes the early fly embryo to become multilayered.
