Departamento de Gravitación y Teoría de Campos

                          Seminarios 2011

  

                          Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, UNAM
[ ICN-UNAM]

Jueves 1 de Diciembre, a las 17:00 hrs en la sala de seminarios del ICN

Martin Müller (Univ. Metz, Francia)

Instabilities and symmetry breaking of growing membranes and tissues

During their growth soft biological tissues are often subjected to forces that affect their shape. In particular, beyond a critical growth factor they will start to make self-contacts and break symmetry. For simple cases such as a growing elastic disc a combination of finite elemente simulations and analytical methods can be used to determine the resulting geometries and stresses. These methods are not restricted to soft tissues but can be applied to other interfaces such as fluid lipid membranes. A closed membrane in spherical confinement forms a single axisymmetric invagination when the area of the membrane is slightly larger than the area of the outer sphere. For higher surface area more complicated folding patterns are observed. Even though these structures result from a minimal model they could nevertheless help to identify the basic building blocks in the morphogenesis of real biological tissues and organelles.