Brilliant Image
A multiscale model of vertebrate somitogenesis was recently created by the Bicomplexity Institute at Indiana University, portraying an early developmental process common to all vertebrates. By combining current submodels of somitogenesis mechanisms at different scales, simulations were reproduced that offered many features of this important developmental process. Among the reproduced features are those depicted above: dynamic morphology and cell rearrangements during somite formation, evolving patterns of diffusible extracellular FGF8 signaling and intracellular Lfng expression, and interspecies-like variation in somite size and frequency of formation.
