From, Research Center for Environmental Health, Research Unit Sensory Biology & Organogenesis, Munich

Will give a seminar entitled:

Structural and Dimensional Recovery During Organ Regeneration

SUMMARY

While we have increasingly detailed lists of genes implicated in organ regeneration, it remains arduous and not always straightforward to identify which genes are the true drivers of repair or how they control the process. I would argue that this in part stems from the traditional collective thinking about organ regeneration, which has been dominated by a strong attention to the molecular underpinning of cell-fate acquisition, cell movement and proliferation. Yet, the lack of a quantitative understanding of these processes and how they interact. My group has been focusing attention on a less intensely studied aspect or organ repair — the coordinated behavior of multiple cells performing simultaneous decisions during dimensional and architectural recovery. This aspect of tissue rebuilding remains poorly understood because the signalling interactions between cells that transition through “non-terminal states” increases the dimensionality of the problem, as sub-sets of cells influence the behaviour of other sub-sets dynamically.  I will show our recent advances in revealing deterministic and non-deterministic processes that guide organ regeneration and size control.