Tissue mechanobiology: Mechanical forces behind tissue morphogenesis

Our research is focused on tissue dynamics in fly embryo during the development and in engineered tissue.

We are interested in two particular aspects, how cell mechanics that evolve over time and in space emerge as large-scale tissue dynamics (as an intrinsic force), and how cell mechanics arises from tissue dynamics and feedback to cellular and molecular function (as an extrinsic force).

To study the mechanical interactions between cells within a tissue, we detect and extract the mechanical signatures (e.g., cell adhesion, cytoskeleton, and mechanical forces) from a tissue with an interdisciplinary approach that combines imaging, quantitative analysis, gene manipulation, biophysical manipulation tools (e.g., laser ablation), and biophysical modeling.

In this presentation, I am going to cover our recent findings regarding mechanical force behind tissue morphogenesis [1-5], including an active mechanical role of programmed cell death, apoptosis.