Research

We seek to better understand the role of physics in the behaviour of tissues and the formation of shape. Our primary tool in this research is the vertex model of epithelia, a simple but powerful framework that represents cells as 2D polygons or 3D polyhedrons. This work involved the development of new computational approaches, studying the role of active contributions to tissue dynamics, analytical theories of tissue elasticity, and computational modelling of specific systems in close collaboration with experimentalists (e.g., tumor growth, fruit fly development).

People: Matej Krajnc, Jan Rozman, Primoz Ziherl

Living matter is built from molecules that fold, pack, and stick to one another, and a surprising amount of what they do follows from physics rather than biology alone. We use theory and computer simulation to ask how the shape, charge, and topology of biological molecules determine the way they behave. What makes a long RNA chain fold into a compact, branched architecture, and how does that shape influence what the molecule can do? How do the patchy charge patterns on a protein surface decide whether two proteins attract or repel, and how does that change with acidity? What are the general rules for arranging objects on a curved surface, whether those objects are proteins in a virus shell or the patterned spikes on a pollen grain? Common to all three is a search for the generic physical constraints—geometry, charge, topology—that shape biological structure without being written into any individual molecule.

People: Anže Božič