Abstract
Lung branching structure is the one of the most complex pattern formation and the mechanisms of branching morphogenesis has not been fully understood yet. Computational simulation methods like a Reaction-Diffusion (RD) model will be strong tools to elucidate the developing mechanisms by calculating molecular dynamics, which is hard to be visualized by experiments. We recently found that two-dimensional branching morphogenesis when cells were set with high concentration gradient on a glass slide covered by extracellular matrix. The cell position control is relatively easy for 2D culture and our system does not require heterotypic cell-cell interactions but epithelial cells can produce the branches by themselves. Here we employed photolithography technologies to control initial cell position on a glass slide in order to match the in-vitro experimental conditions and simulation conditions exactly. By conducting branching experiments and developmental simulations simultaneously with the same initial cell positions, quality of the analysis can be improved significantly to elucidate the lung branching mechanisms.
