In silico study of mechanical stresses at the cellular level during tissue development

Mechanical contraints play a key role in tissue morphogenesis. We propose to study these mechanisms at the cellular level, thanks to our virtual biomechanical cell model. This model defines biological cell behaviors, such as cell motility, mitosis and adhesion as well as methods to evaluate cell compression/stretching and shearing. The evaluation of these constraints allows the virtual cells to respond by changing their color during simulation and lead to the observation of emerging patterns in cell differentiation during tissue growth: the main purpose of this evaluation is to give the cells the ability to respond to mechanical constraints by differentiating. This approach allows to study the influence of mechanotransduction during tissue morphogenesis.