CNLD Seminar with Tanniemola Liverpool

Abstract: I will discuss some recent work looking quantitatively at the process of

wound healing using ideas from thermodynamics, continuum and statistical

mechanics. Wound healing is a highly conserved process required for

survival of an animal after tissue damage. The wound repair process is not

only of great interest in its own right but is also a laboratory to study

complex tissue dynamics and regeneration.

Many wounds involve damage to an epithelial (barrier) tissue (like skin) that

separates different regions of the body of a living organism. I will describe

some recent work on studying wound healing in two dimensional epithelial

tissues of a fruit fly pupal wing. This epithelium was chosen because it is

transparent and accessible to sophisticated imaging techniques. We use live

confocal time-lapse microscopy to follow the behaviour of cells in a tissue

before and after wounding.

https://utexas.zoom.us/j/97250566432

I will focus on three cell-behaviours that are generally accepted to contribute to wound re-epithelialisation: cell shape

deformation, cell division, and cell migration.

I will describe how we are beginning to use a combination of mathematics, physics and biology to disentangle some

of the organising principles behind the complex orchestrated dynamics that lead to wound healing.