About her PhD project

In the central nervous system, tissue patterning is well documented at the molecular level but remains largely unexplored from a biophysical perspective. We particularly lack information about the role played by cell and tissue mechanics. For example, Dorso-ventral (D-V) patterning of the neural tube relies on the integration of two opposite morphogen gradients (Shh signalling from the notochord/floor plate and BMP signalling from the roof plate). We recently observed supracellular actomyosin cables in the lab restricted to specific subdomains along the D-V axis. We aim to investigate whether the different progenitor populations arising from the D-V patterning present different mechanical properties and if cell and tissue mechanics participate in the creation and/or maintenance of sharp boundaries between these different domains by a spatial mechano-transcriptomic approach. We plan to combine a detailed deep-learning-based morphometric and mechanical analysis of the tissue with genetic patterning data, to extract the mechanical parameters that vary according to genetic patterning.