Seminar by Prof. Biplab Bose, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Guwahati on "Collective Behavior of Cells: Learning from Planar Cell Polarity"

13 Oct 2023
Seminar Room # 350, second floor annex

Speaker: Prof. Biplab Bose
Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian
Institute of Technology Guwahati

Title: "Collective Behavior of Cells: Learning from Planar
Cell Polarity".

Day and Date: Friday, October 13, 2023

Time: 15.30 hrs.

Venue: Seminar room, room no. 350,
Chemistry Department (second floor)
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Hosted by Prof. Sandip Kar

Talk Title : "Collective Behavior of Cells: Learning from Planar Cell Polarity"
Abstract
Epithelial cells, like those on the wings of a fly, are polarized, with an asymmetric distribution of molecules and structures inside a cell. In Planar Cell Polarity (PCP), all epithelial cells in a particular region get collectively polarized and aligned along the proximal-distal axis. PCP is an example of cellular phase transition through local and global interactions. We use a lattice-based spin model to capture the essential aspects of this phase transition. In this model, the alignment of cells leads to clusters of aligned cells, and such clustering exhibits a percolation transition. We show that percolation transition is crucial to achieve robust collective alignment of cells even when some cells have aberrations. In this talk, I will discuss various behaviors of this toy model. I will illustrate that if we remove the bells and whistles, a 'complicated' biological phenomenon can be equated with a 'simple' physical model that captures the behaviors of many other phenomena.