A paper co-authored by BME faculty member Jason Gleghorn appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, published July 28, 2015.  The paper entitled “Mechanically patterning the embryonic airway epithelium” uses a combination of 3D culture experiments and theoretical modeling to understand how the airways within the developing lung form such complex and repeatable architectures that are conserved within a given species and critical for survival.  They identified a growth-induced buckling mechanism that can control the initiation and pattern of new epithelial branches.  Tuning epithelial growth changes the wavelength of the bucking instability and thereby the branching pattern. These findings emphasize the role of mechanical forces during morphogenesis and indicate that in addition to genetic programs, physical cues also regulate the spatially patterned cell behaviors that underlie organ assembly in the embryo. Read More Here