Antoine is a 2nd year PhD student in Matteo Rauzi’s lab, interested in understanding and mathematically modeling the tissue folding mechanisms of early embryonic development in Drosophila.

During Drosophila gastrulation, a localised increase in myosin activity tenses the actin cytoskeleton, driving the formation of a tissue-scale furrow through internal stresses, eventually leading to its internalisation. The stages of this process subsequent to the initial furrowing, leading upto full mesoderm internalization, remains poorly understood. In his project, Antoine has been focusing on extending a previous purely elastic model of this process to a viscoelastic one.

In his first PhD club presentation, he gave an engaging talk about viscoelasticity, the different types of rheology and approaches to model them. He also explained how and why early developing biological tissues exhibit viscoelastic behavior with a liquid-like rheology, putting these in the context of his project.

If you want to learn more about Antoine’s presentation, check it out in the IBV common server.

(By Antoine Jallon and Sreeparvathy Edachola)