ActBio: Exploiting the Parallels between Active Matter and Mechanobiology

ActBio：利用活性物质与机械生物学之间的相似之处

• 批准号: EP/Y033981/1
• 负责人: Julia Mary Yeomans
• 金额: $ 211.6万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FY033981%2F1
• 关键词: ActBio; Exploiting; Parallels; between; Active

Changes in shape, and the reorganisation, differentiation and growth of cells and tissues that underpin them, are fundamental to biology. These are the processes by which a single cell develops into the diversity of living creatures. It is now well recognised that the physical concepts of stresses, forces and flows are an integral but little understood contribution to how biological systems self-organise by undergoing complex, yet surprisingly robust cell re-modelling and morphogenesis. For example, flows are intimately associated with invagination in the chick embryo, forces and confinement by the extracellular matrix appear to control the growth of cell spheroids and organoids, and topological defects have been implicated in the growth of Hydra tentacles and in cancer metastasis.Active matter describes materials that operate out of thermodynamic equilibrium, taking energy from their surroundings and using it to do work. This description is immediately applicable to living systems, and the recent development in the physics community of theories of active matter provide an unprecedented opportunity to understand the physical processes that drive mechanobiology and developmental processes. Guided by biological questions, I will extend and apply the theories of active matter physics, developing both cell-scale and continuum in silico models. My aim is to identify generic physical ideas that underpin collective cell motility, cell remodelling and tissue growth, the importance of confinement by the extracellular matrix and mechanochemical coupling. These investigations will combine to explain when and how forces and flows contribute to biological processes. The research will both contribute to a framework for the interdisciplinary toolkit that is necessary to understand biological self-organisation across scales and provide insight into the theories of active systems operating out of thermodynamic equilibrium.

形状的变化以及支撑它们的细胞和组织的重组，分化和生长是生物学的基础。这些是单个细胞发展成生物多样性的过程。现在已经众所周知，应力，力和流动的物理概念是一种不可或缺的，但鲜为人知的是生物系统如何通过进行复杂但令人惊讶的稳健细胞重新模型和形态发生的贡献。例如，流量与雏鸡胚胎中的内陷密切相关，细胞外基质的力和限制似乎控制了细胞球体和类器官的生长，并且拓扑缺陷与水力触角和癌症转移的生长有关，在癌症转移的材料中描述了动作精力，并在周围的工作中表现出了动力，而动用了动力，而动用了动力。该描述立即适用于生活系统，而活跃物质理论的物理学界的最新发展为了解驱动机械生物学和发展过程的物理过程提供了前所未有的机会。在生物学问题的指导下，我将扩展并应用活性物理学的理论，在计算机模型中同时开发细胞尺度和连续体。我的目的是确定基于集体细胞运动，细胞重塑和组织生长，细胞外基质和机械化学耦合的重要性的通用物理观念。这些研究将结合起来，以解释力和流动何时以及如何促进生物过程。这项研究都将有助于跨学科工具包的框架，这对于了解跨尺度的生物学自我组织所必需的，并提供对在热力学平衡中运行的主动系统理论的见解。