Journal article
A spatially-averaged mathematical model of kidney branching morphogenesis
VS Zubkov, AN Combes, KM Short, J Lefevre, NA Hamilton, IM Smyth, MH Little, HM Byrne
Journal of Theoretical Biology | Published : 2015
Abstract
Kidney development is initiated by the outgrowth of an epithelial ureteric bud into a population of mesenchymal cells. Reciprocal morphogenetic responses between these two populations generate a highly branched epithelial ureteric tree with the mesenchyme differentiating into nephrons, the functional units of the kidney. While we understand some of the mechanisms involved, current knowledge fails to explain the variability of organ sizes and nephron endowment in mice and humans. Here we present a spatially-averaged mathematical model of kidney morphogenesis in which the growth of the two key populations is described by a system of time-dependant ordinary differential equations. We assume tha..
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Awarded by Human Frontier Science Program
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Human Frontiers Scientific Program (HFSP RGP0039/2011), the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (NHMMRC APP1002478; to ML), an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grant (DP130100886; to IS) and in part by Award No. KUK-C1-013-04 made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). ML is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the NHMRC. IS holds an ARC Future Fellowship. We are grateful to Professor Andrew McMahon and Dr Lori O'Brien for helpful discussions and to Adler Ju for technical support.