A mathematical view on cell packing
A key challenge in the embryonic development of complex life forms is the correct specification of cell positions so that organs and limbs grow in the right places. To understand how cells arrange themselves at the earliest stages of development, an interdisciplinary team of applied mathematicians at MIT and experimentalists at Princeton University identified mathematical principles governing the packings of interconnected cell assemblies. In a paper entitled “Entropic effects in cell lineage tree packings,” published this month in Nature Physics, the team reports direct experimental observations and mathematical modeling of cell packings in convex enclosures, a biological packing problem encountered in many complex organisms, including humans. In their study, the authors investigated multi-cellular packings in the egg chambers of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an important developmental model organism. Each egg chamber contains exactly 16 germline cells that are linked by cytoplasmic bridges, resulting from a series of incomplete cell divisions. The linkages...