IPLS Seminar - Professor Ray Goldstein

Title: Upside down and inside out: the biomechanics of cell sheet folding

Abstract: Deformations of cell sheets are ubiquitous in early animal development, 

often arising from a complex and poorly understood interplay of cell 

shape changes, division, and migration. In this talk I will describe an 

approach to understanding such problems based on perhaps the simplest 

example of cell sheet folding: the "inversion" process of the algal 

genus Volvox, during which spherical embryos literally turn themselves 

inside out through a process hypothesized to arise from cell shape 

changes alone.  Through a combination of light sheet microscopy and 

elasticity theory a quantitative understanding of this process is now 

emerging.

Host: Dr Melda Tozluoglu (m.tozluoglu@ucl.ac.uk)