Upcoming Event

How Mechanical Canalization Shapes the Gut Tube.


Event Details

Type
Center for Studies in Physics and Biology Seminars
Speaker(s)
Noah Mitchell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Chicago
Speaker bio(s)

In the development of inner organs such as the gut, laminar sheets of cells fold and coil into intricate 3D tubular structures that are essential for organ function. While the genes that regulate these processes are increasingly well catalogued, the mechanical forces that channel molecular activity into stereotyped 3D geometries remain poorly understood. The Drosophila embryonic midgut provides a genetically tractable and optically accessible system to interrogate the sequence of dynamic motifs of inner organ morphogenesis. Two planar sheets--each composed of endoderm (epithelial) and mesodermal (muscle) layers--wrap into a tube, which subsequently folds into chambers, then breaks left-right symmetry to form a chiral coil. I will present our work on each of these three steps, highlighting the mechanisms for robustness that canalize gut development into discrete developmental pathways, as well as the control knobs that switch the developmental program into alternative developmental trajectories. In each case, we find muscle cells are central drivers of tissue mechanics, programming tissue shape changes and driving transitions in the behavior of the underlying endoderm.

Open to
Public
Reception
Refreshments, 3:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., Lower Level Greenberg Building (CRC)
Phone
(212) 327-8636
Sponsor
Melanie Lee
(212) 327-8636
leem@rockefeller.edu