Kyoto University
Yoshida-Konoe-cho
Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, JAPAN
Research and Education Platform for Innovative Research
on Dynamic Living Systems Based on Multi-dimensional
Quantitative Imaging and Mathematical Modeling
http://www.lif.kyoto-u.ac.jp/systemsbiology/index.html
Dynamics of cellular materials:
from foams to biological tissues
Prof. François Graner
CNRS Research Director
Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, UMR 7057, CNRS, Univ. Paris 7
Liquid foams are made of gas bubbles surrounded by water. They are model systems to understand complex
cellular materials (made of cells tiling the space), which behave simultaneously as solids and liquids.
We have established tools to link the discrete description, at the bubble scale, with a continuous description,
which encompasses the information useful at the global level. This enabled us to suggest a theoretical model
able to predict how a foam flows in general geometries. It has been successfully tested against an experiment in
a channel where a foam flows around various obstacles.
Such descriptive tools apply to a large class of disordered systems, irrespective of the underlying physics.
They even apply to aggregates of living cells, despite their huge difference with bubbles. The approach has been
used to investigate the development of living tissues in the fruit fly (drosophila). Movies of the fly back resolve all
details of cell contours during the metamorphosis from fly larva to adult. Multi-scale analysis determines how
individual cell changes (displacements, deformations, divisions) determine the tissue development.
Date and Place:
10/31 (Thu)
13:30-14:30
iCeMS Main Building
Seminar Room
Contact:
Michiyuki Matsuda (Graduate School of Medicine)
Tel: 075-753-9450 http://www.lif.kyoto-u.ac.jp/labs/fret/
Kaoru Sugimura (Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences)
Tel: 075-753-9866
http://www.koolau.info/