Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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Novel Subcellular Element (SCEM) and multi-phase modeling approaches will be
demonstrated and used for generating and testing novel hypothesis about mechanisms
of blood clot formation and epithelial tissue development. The SCE model combines
main subcellular components such as cell’s cortex, cytoplasm and adhesive membrane.
Implementing the model on clusters of the Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) enables
one to simulate in detail platelet flipping in blood flow next to vessel wall and epithelial
cells proliferation at tissue level with subcellular resolution. The mechanical properties
of cells, including cell elasticity, and adhesivity between cells were calibrated initially by
performing single cell and double cell stretching tests. It will be shown that the
calibrated model can recapitulate cellular and tissue-scale properties consistent with the
experimental data such as polygon class and cell size distributions in growing
epithelium. Model simulations predict strong correlation between tissue growth rate and
epithelial cell-cell rearrangements. It will be also shown that down-regulation of
adhesion and increase in cortical stiffness of mitotic cells are required for recapitulating
mitotic rounding in epithelial cells.