Physical Mechanisms of Patterning Instabilities in the Formation of Vascular Network

Endothelial cells, which line the inner walls of blood vessels, self-organize into network structures in vitro and in vivo. The physical mechanisms of network formation are a current subject of debate may be important during development, wound heeling, and tumor growth. Using Glazier and Graner's Cellular Potts Model (CPM) to model chemotactically migrating cells, we studied the patterning instabilities and scaling properties of the network in two and three-dimensions. We ran our simulations in Compucell3D, an open-source software environment based on CPM (http://simtk.org/home/compucell3d). The average characteristics of the network structure are independent of the initial configuration of cells and scale with the diffusion parameters of the chemoattractant. We have also developed an analytical PDE model to study nature of patterning instabilities.