Mathematical modelling of growth control in Drosophila development

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Have you ever wondered why your hands are the size they are? Or why some people have bigger hands, but they are almost identical in shape and proportion to your hands? The control of organ growth is highly complex, but highly important, as when the control system fails, we get overgrowth, and frequently cancer. How does the organ know when to stop growing? How does it control its shape? If we can understand this, perhaps we will be able to understand what happens when tissues over grow, and treat the problem (e.g. cancer) at its source. Many biologists have successfully used the Drosophila wing as a model to study growth control, revealing many parallels to human growth control. I hope to put all these data, the pieces of a puzzle, together, into a mathematical/computer model and eventually make a virtual wing. I‘ll be able to compare the relative importance of the different control mechanisms, something that‘s quite hard to do via experiments. I may find that internal control is key, and the environment plays little role, or vice versa. I can also model different cancerous conditions, and quickly test treatments before deciding whether they are worth trying experimentally/clinically.