Research

Epithelial tissues are one of the main tissues found in animal systems and serve, among other functions, as a mechanical barrier to the environment. During morphogenesis and adult life, these tissues can undergo large deformations at a variety of stress amplitudes, timescales and distribution. 

A primary goal of my research is to understand how do the rheological properties of these tissues arise from their subcellular components, and how these cohesive sheets of cells form their remarkable three-dimensional structures necessary to fulfil their function.  These tissues are living materials made up of cells that continuously consume energy to generate the endogenous out-of-equilibrium forces leading to the emergent tissue properties and shape. In turn, cells rely on their cytoskeletal elements and junctional networks to integrate mechanical cues and provide the corresponding mechanical response. To understand how these subcellular components collectively lead to emergent properties and response at tissue level, we developed a theoretical framework which bridges active gel models of the actomyosin cortex with 3D vertex models at tissue scale. Below are some simulations arising from the model, showcasing the relevance of the actomyosin cortex in a wide variety of phenomenologies.

Publications

A.Marín-Llauradó, S. Kale, A. Ouzeri, T. Golde, R. Sunyer, A. Torres-Sánchez, E. Latorre, M. Gómez-González, P. Roca-Cusachs, M. Arroyo, X. Trepat (2023), Mapping mechanical stress in curved epithelia of designed size and shape, Nature Communications, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38879-7

A. Ouzeri, Theory and computation of multiscale epithelial mechanics : from active gels to vertex models, PhD thesis (2023), http://hdl.handle.net/10803/690044