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arxiv: 1410.0566 · v1 · pith:2YBQJI34new · submitted 2014-10-01 · 🧬 q-bio.OT · math.MG

Geometry of Morphogenesis

classification 🧬 q-bio.OT math.MG
keywords spacecellcellsorganismbundleconfigurationdeterminesepigenetic
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We introduce a formalism for the geometry of eukaryotic cells and organisms.Cells are taken to be star-convex with good biological reason. This allows for a convenient description of their extent in space as well as all manner of cell surface gradients. We assume that a spectrum of such cell surface markers determines an epigenetic code for organism shape. The union of cells in space at a moment in time is by definition the organism taken as a metric subspace of Euclidean space, which can be further equipped with an arbitrary measure. Each cell determines a point in space thus assigning a finite configuration of distinct points in space to an organism, and a bundle over this configuration space is introduced with fiber a Hilbert space recording specific epigenetic data. On this bundle, a Lagrangian formulation of morphogenetic dynamics is proposed based on Gromov-Hausdorff distance which at once describes both embryo development and regenerative growth.

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