Stem cells and organoids, as a model system, allows us to push forward our research into how cells form tissues. Studying tissues using organoids and the reconstitution of complex biochemical systems allow the creation of a framework of cell and tissue organization. With organoids, human tissue biology has become accessible for study in a way that was not possible before.
The MPI-CBG uses a multi-disciplinary approach to understand the basic machineries responsible for cell division, cell adhesion, cell polarity, cell-cell interactions, organization of the cytoplasm, intracellular transport, membrane trafficking, and how such processes are regulated and modified by signalling and metabolic pathways in the specific context of tissues.
How do the properties of cells emerge from the interactions between individual cells, and how do cells emerge from the interactions of molecules? We believe that the questions of how resilience, robustness, and precision emerge from molecular interactions and the appropriate physics and computational models to describe biological systems are the central questions that will occupy biology for the next decades.
Because descriptions of emergent properties at the cell and tissue scales have similar physical and mathematical principles, this provides a platform for a multiscale understanding of biological organization. We and others have termed this field “the physics of life.”
the development of tissues from cells and organs from tissues, as well as the underlying cell biology of these processes.Organoids allow us to work on human tissue biology and re-engineer tissue formation in vitro. The studies of tissues using organoids and the reconstitution of complex biochemical systems in vitro allow the creation of a framework of cell and tissue organization that allows us to explore fate, morphogenesis, tissue shape and function, and the origin of disease.