Team members

MSc student

Physical approaches to cell dynamics and tissue morphogenesis

We aim to understand the physical principles that underpin the morphogenesis of animals. To do so, we develop and apply quantitative approaches to observe, perturb and predict morphogenetic movements.

Our work addresses fundamental questions in the morphogenesis of multicellular systems: how do cells generate, transmit and respond to mechanical forces, from the supramolecular to the multicellular scale? How are these forces coupled to cell signaling and differentiation processes? How do organized and functional structures emerge from such interactions? To address these questions, we focus on three aspects of morphogenesis:

(1) The organization and supramolecular dynamics of cell contacts;

(2) The mechanics of cell contacts and their remodeling;

(3) The mechanochemical state changes in multicellular self-organization.

We develop both experimental and theoretical approaches to study several in vivo and in vitro multicellular systems : the Drosophila and C. elegans embryos, and mouse embryonic organoids. The originality of our approach lies in the integration of both physics (imaging/mechanics/modeling) and experimental biology to study tissue morphogenesis quantitatively.