Dr. Brad Peercy awarded a new NSF grant

Scope of the supported project

Dr. Brad Peercy's most recent NSF grant continues his work on representing the movement of clustered cells through a challenging geometric landscape.  In conjunction with experimentalist Dr. Michelle Starz-Gaiano (UMBC Biological Sciences) and former graduate student Dr. Naghmeh Akhavan (U Michigan Mathematics) we use in vivo data and Phase Field modeling to represent the energies and forces in cellular interactions in response to chemical signals represented with reaction diffusion equations.  This hybrid PDE system will then be validated and used to predict migration pathology.

Motivation

During human development and wound healing, cells of the body must migrate to new locations in a coordinated way. Moving cells rely on chemicals in their environment to direct them to the correct places. Often, they are guided by positive cues called chemoattractants in a process termed ‘chemotaxis’. In in vitro systems, cells will move along a gradient of chemical cues, but in vivo it is difficult to predict how gradients form and how cells respond to variations, since the surrounding environment is heterogeneous and likely to alter both the chemical distribution and the response.

Training

This award and related subaward will train graduate students and early career researchers.  The grant will support broader interdisciplinary efforts through CIMBRE.

References

• N Akhavan, A George, M Starz-Gaiano, BE Peercy, Phase-field modeling of border cell cluster migration in Drosophila, PLOS Computational Biology 22 (4), e1014176.
• N Akhavan, A George, M Starz-Gaia,no, BE Peercy, Cell Migration Boundary Motion in Drosophila Egg Chambers: A Combined Phase Field and Chemoattractant Model, arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01357.
• A George, N Akhavan, BE Peercy, M Starz-Gaiano, Chemotaxis of Drosophila border cells is modulated by tissue geometry through dispersion of chemoattractants, Iscience 28 (3)
• BE Peercy, M Starz-Gaiano, Clustered cell migration: Modeling the model system of Drosophila border cells, Seminars in cell & developmental biology 100, 167-176.