Curvature in Biological Systems: Its Quantification, Emergence, and Implications across the Scales
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Surface curvature both emerges from, and influences the behavior of, living objects at length scales ranging from cell membranes to single cells to tissues and organs. The relevance of surface curvature in biology is supported by numerous experimental and theoretical investigations in recent years. In this review, first, a brief introduction to the key ideas of surface curvature in the context of biological systems is given and the challenges that arise when measuring surface curvature are discussed. Giving an overview of the emergence of curvature in biological systems, its significance at different length scales becomes apparent. On the other hand, summarizing current findings also shows that both single cells and entire cell sheets, tissues or organisms respond to curvature by modulating their shape and their migration behavior. Finally, the interplay between the distribution of morphogens or micro-organisms and the emergence of curvature across length scales is addressed with examples demonstrating these key mechanistic principles of morphogenesis. Overall, this review highlights that curved interfaces are not merely a passive by-product of the chemical, biological, and mechanical processes but that curvature acts also as a signal that co-determines these processes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2206110 |
| Journal | Advanced Materials |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 13 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| ISSN | 0935-9648 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
B.S. and A.R. contributed equally to this work. A.P.G.C. and P.R.F. acknowledge the funding from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), through IDMEC, under LAETA project UIDB/50022/2020. T.H.V.P. acknowledges the funding from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), through Ph.D. Grant 2020.04417.BD. A.S. acknowledges that this work was partially supported by the ATTRACT Investigator Grant (no. A17/MS/11572821/MBRACE, to A.S.) from the Luxembourg National Research Fund. The author thanks Gerardo Ceada for his help in the graphical representations. N.A.K. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (grant 851960) and the Gravitation Program “Materials Driven Regeneration,” funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (024.003.013). M.B.A. acknowledges support from the French National Research Agency (grant ANR‐201‐8‐CE1‐3‐0008 for the project “Epimorph”). G.E.S.T. acknowledges funding by the Australian Research Council through project DP200102593. A.C. acknowledges the funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Emmy Noether Grant CI 203/‐2 1, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2021‐123013O‐BI00) and the IKERBASQUE Basque Foundation for Science.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.
- biological systems, mechanotransduction, morphogenesis, surface curvature
Research areas
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