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Can We Compute the Embryo?

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Old Questions and Young Approaches to Animal Evolution

Part of the book series: Fascinating Life Sciences ((FLS))

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Abstract

The major goal of developmental biology is to understand how the complex multicellular structure of an organism is built from a simple fertilized egg. Development is a complex and dynamic process that involves multicellular coordination of growth, cell-cell communication and cell movements, all in a 3D physical space. The ability to visualize cell and molecular level events in living embryos developed in recent years is bringing greater insight about the logic of the developmental processes. However, a comprehensive understanding of development usually requires the use of sophisticated computational models that simulate its dynamics and predict wild-type and mutant phenotypes. Building models that simulate morphogenetic processes, on the organ or even the whole embryo level, will play a decisive role to achieve a deep understanding of how organismal morphology originates and, ultimately, how it evolves.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Biology Unit, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, Spain

    Miquel Marín-Riera

  2. Institute for Life Sciences/Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Miguel Brun-Usan

Authors
  1. Miquel Marín-Riera
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  2. Miguel Brun-Usan
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Correspondence to Miquel Marín-Riera .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

    José M. Martín-Durán

  2. Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

    Bruno C. Vellutini

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Marín-Riera, M., Brun-Usan, M. (2019). Can We Compute the Embryo?. In: Martín-Durán, J., Vellutini, B. (eds) Old Questions and Young Approaches to Animal Evolution. Fascinating Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18202-1_12

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