Morphogenesis I

How cells and tissues robustly maintain or recover organ functionality when subjected to perturbation or catastrophe is a largely open question in biology. Zebrafish lateral line neuromasts are an ideal system to study several programs proposed to be involved in these processes. Due to their low total cell number, neuromasts are tractable systems. Neuromasts contain three spatial organized cell types that form a rudimentary sensory organ. Support cells act as the organ’s stem cell population and principally control the proportioning of all three cell types. Here, we ask if and how the neuromast can recover steady state cell proportions when the organ’s cell proliferation program is perturbed. By combining high resolution timelapse microscopy, single cell segmentation and dynamical systems theory, we are able to identify how  local or global changes in cell-cell coupling affect the steady state of organ structural organization when proliferation is modulated up or down. This allows us to subsequently interrogate biological and/or physical mechanisms potentially underlying these shifts away from steady state in silico with spatio-temporal precision. In parallel, we develop experimental methods that will allow us to test resultant in silico predictions in vivo with the same level of control.