Research Theme

My research interest is to control and design self-organized structures which are formed by biological cells and biomolecules.
Especially, I am recently interested in active matter which has spontaneous motility. My research goal is to establish mathematical design methods for static structures and fluid motion of active matter.

Mathematical design of biological cell alignment by controlling topological defects

Spindle-shaped cells can be viewed as a kind of active matter. Especially, such cells behave like nematic liquid crystals when the cells proliferate and align along a specific direction, which results in the generation of topological defects (singular points at which the cell direction cannot be determined) in the cell population. Since the topological defects are known to be related to several biological roles as well as cell orientation, it is necessary to predict and control the positions of the topological defects.
To this end, I have experimentally demonstrated the control of the defect positions by geometrical guides. Recently, I have studied mathematical methods for predicting the defect positions of cell populations in arbitrarily shaped guides using complex function theories. The mathematical methods will be applied to bottom-up tissue engineering with high accuracy and reproducibility.




Related presentation：

• Hiroki Miyazako, Tetsuhiko Teshima, Yuko Ueno, “Systematic Direction of Topological Defects in Cell Population by Computational Design of Geometrical Boundary,” 2018 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, BM05.04.09, Boston, USA, Nov. 2018.

• TOP