Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Candidate Seminar: Shinuo Weng

The Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering is pleased to welcome faculty candidate Shinuo Weng from the University of Texas at Austin in presenting their candidate seminar: “Multiscale Mechanobiology for Tissue Morphogenesis”

Abstract

Tissue morphogenesis is a biological process by which a tissue takes shape during embryonic development.  Disrupted morphogenesis leads to structural defects and thus to congenital anomalies, which are the leading cause of death for children under ten in the U.S.  I integrate developmental cell biology, multiscale biomechanics and mechanobiology, and engineering to understand the normal tissue morphogenesis from a biomechanical perspective, and how congenital anomalies arise when these mechanical linkages are disrupted.

I have been studying convergent extension (CE), a conserved collective cell movement that elongates the head-to-tail body axis and several organ systems during development.  I have shown that fine-tuned mechanical feedback acts at every length scale to coordinate molecular, cellular, and tissue-level behaviors that ensure robust tissue shape formation.  Interestingly, we found that a poorly characterized catenin ARVCF deleted in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (aka DiGeorge syndrome or velocardiofacial syndrome), is largely dispensable for cell movement of CE, but is absolutely required for the establishment of cellular and tissue-level mechanical characteristics.  These data suggest that tissue anomalies by Arvcf depletion are mechanical defects.

Future work will focus on unraveling intracellular and extracellular mechanical cues that coordinate multiscale behaviors for robust tissue morphogenesis and the underlying mechanisms.  It will provide new insight into cell and developmental biology and tissue engineering, and further guide us to design engineering approaches to escort successful tissue morphogenesis.

For more information, contact Prof. Zhen Ma at zma112@syr.edu