Genes, Morphogenesis, Evolution: Life and ALife Aspects


Regulative Morphogenesis


Regulative Models for Epithelial Morphogenesis

A vast word of regulative models comes to light in the field of epithelial morphogenesis. Fred Cummings, simply starting from the extremum formulation of the Laplace algorithm for the multicellular layer morphogenesis (as in the case of Fig.#) with a necessary constraint, was lead to following non-linear equation for morphogenesis. In conformal co-ordinates u and v this equation has form:
, where K is Gauss curvature of the epithelial layer, m is local morphogen concentration, g is metric function and e is parameter. The term act as a self-source term in this Poisson-like equation. This interesting equation turned to exhibit size invariance as a very natural consequence, almost as a sort of side benefit, and not as a contrived effect. As Cummings (1990) wrote, it is apparent that it will be difficult to think of another way in which the size invariance could occur.

Equally with self-organisation via pattern-form interplay (Game of Morphogenesis), the size regulation is considered as a fundamental aspect of biological morphogenesis. Algorithms of the regulative morphogenesis, elaborated in theoretical biology, must have perspectives for application in the field of artificial morphogenesis, in ALife.



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