Former Manning group postdoc Dapeng (Max) Bi has accepted a tenure track position at Northeastern University beginning in 2017.  He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University.  Congratulations, Max! His website is here.

Our manuscript in collaboration with the Marchetti group describing a glass transition in a new self-propelled voronoi model for active tissues was just accepted at PRX. Congratulations, Max and Xingbo!

http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.06578

Manning is co-organizing the Aspen Center for Physics Workshop, Physics of Development and Disease, March 27-April 1 2016 in Aspen, CO.

The website for the conference is here.

Manning is giving a public lecture, and Merkel is presenting a talk entitled, “Glassy dynamics in a model for confluent three-dimensional tissues”.

It was announced this week that Lisa Manning has won the 2016 IUPAP Young Investigator Award given by the C3 (Statistical Physics) commission, along with Martin Lenz. The award is given “in recognition of her outstanding statistical physics contributions to the fields of granular materials, jamming, and biological cell dynamics.”  The award is given to one or two scientists from around the world every three years. Manning is the first American and the first woman to win the award.  More information about the award can be found here: http://statphys26.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/16

Our manuscript “A density-independent rigidity transition in biological tissues” with Max Dapeng Bi as lead author and Lisa Manning as corresponding author, was published online this week in Nature Physics!  Congrats Max!

Nature Physics online 21 Sept 2015

Lisa gave an invited talk at the 2015 Soft Matter Gordon research conference in New London, NH, and was elected vice-chair of the conference in 2017, to serve as chair in 2019.  A news article on the wonderful representation of SU soft matter at the conference is here:

http://asnews.syr.edu/newsevents_2015/releases/physics_grc_conference.html

Lisa is the PI on a recently awarded R01 proposal to the NIH, “Quantitative Modeling of Cell Shape Changes During Organogenesis”. The award is for $1.02 million over 4 years, to be shared with collaborator Jeff Amack at Upstate Medical University.

The award abstract reads: During embryonic development, the proper formation of tissues and organs depends on cell shape changes that are governed by mechanical forces and tensions, but the biomolecular origin of those forces remains poorly understood. We will develop a new dynamic version of the vertex model for tissues to predict the interplay of signaling and forces that control organogenesis, in combination with in vivo microscopy and molecular biology techniques to quantitatively test those predictions. Kupffer’s vesicle (KV) – which directs left-right patterning in the zebrafish embryo – is used as a model system. Preliminary work indicates that differential interfacial tensions inside KV cells drive programmed shape changes that establish a functional KV organ, and that biochemical signals and forces generated by cells external to KV also contribute to changing cell shapes inside KV. Therefore, this proposal will test the hypothesis that cell shape changes critical for KV organogenesis are a direct result of specific mechanical forces inside KV cells themselves as well as collective forces
and signals generated by the cells surrounding KV. Three specific aims are proposed: Aim1 will use a mathematical vertex model to make predictions about interfacial tensions between cells in the KV, and compare predictions to intensities of labeled cellular cytoskeletal components along those interfaces. Aim 2 will develop a novel dynamic vertex model and a complementary continuum model to predict the forces exerted and motions exhibited by cells surrounding the KV, and verify predictions using Particle Image Velocimetry. Aim 3 will modulate Hedgehog signaling in the embryo to study how the morphogen gradient affects KV cell shape changes, modeled by coupling a reaction-diffusion-advection equation for the morphogen to a dynamic vertex model. Direct results of this work will include: a description of the mechanical and biochemical pathways that lead to KV tissue remodeling and organ function, an understanding of how different perturbations disrupt these pathways, and a new set of mathematical models for tissue mechanics. The long-term goal of this project is to develop and apply mathematics-based methodologies in vivo to discover new mechanisms underlying embryonic development and disease.

Lisa and Max worked together with members of Jeff Fredberg’s group at the Harvard School of public health to see if their theoretical predictions could be verified in human cells from asthma and non-asthma patients.  The theoretical results were spectacularly confirmed, as discussed in a paper published online last week in Nature Materials:

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4357.html

A press release from the Harvard folks is here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/no-traffic-jams-in-asthmatic-cells/

Stay tuned for news on the publication of the associated theory paper…..

(a preprint is available on the arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.0593)

A nice article (with a strange titles) about our group’s research was recently highlighted on the NSF “Discoveries” page:

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134489

SU news article on the award: http://news.syr.edu/physicist-awarded-grant-to-study-physical-cell-biology-93769/

As we grow from a fertilized egg into a human being, our cells push and pull on one another, shaping our tissues, our organs, our bones, and our bodies. Unfortunately we don’t know much about how these microscopic forces, both within and between cells, allow large multi-cellular structures (like people) to develop.

Now, three scientists participating in an innovative research program have proposed an approach for measuring how the forces exerted by individual cells are able to mold bodily tissues into the desired three-dimensional shape.

Justin B. Kinney (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory); M. Lisa Manning (Syracuse University); and Margaret Gardel (University of Chicago) plan to construct small “nanoprobes’’ out of DNA that can be inserted into developing tissues. These probes will then record the forces that different cells experience at different moments in time.

Currently there are methods for measuring the forces in tissues along two-dimensional surfaces. This new proposal, however, promises to enable such measurements in three dimensions. This would provide a critical advance for understanding how three-dimensional structures, such as organs, are formed.  The trio will use the data this new method will produce to build 3D computational models that, guided by principles from theoretical physics, will provide insights into the process of tissue morphogenesis.

Each of the three members of the team were awarded $56,250 for one year to begin work on this project.

See full press release here: http://rescorp.org/news/2015/06/developing-3d-sensors-to-measure-forces-in-and-around-living-tissue