Tuomas Tallinen, tuomas.
tallinen@jyu.fi
Hyperelastic modeling of morphogenesis
Soft tissues in developing embryos exhibit complex mechanics with characteristics between those of fluid and solid. Elastic behavior of the tissues at short time scales is followed by inelastic deformation and flow, and interesting open questions are related to the underlying cellular dynamics. For example, tissue fluidity may result either from flow of cells or from nonuniform cell proliferation. We model growing soft tissues by continuum mechanics, starting from a hyperelastic model, with extensions to inelasticity and flow. In particular, we first focus on the development of the gut and its patterning through mechanical instabilities. Even though the endoderm and mesenchyme tissue layers are just few cells thick, a minimal elastic continuum model provides a reasonable description of the mechanical behavior. We also consider the folding of the brain and how its neuronal and axonal growth may be mapped to a large strain visoelastic model producing folding patterns consistent with observations on a wide range of brains.