Xiaohai Wan
Biomathematics Graduate Program
North Carolina State University

Numerical Simulation Methods for Biological Morphogenesis

Morphogenesis is concerned with shape formations of tissues, organs and 
bodies and is of fundamental importance to developmental biology and 
tissue engineering. To study the mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal 
tissue interactions (e.g. branching morphogenesis) in terms of geometry 
and force, a two-phase Newtonian fluid model is proposed and solved 
numerically using the immersed interface method. The implementation of the 
fluid solver in both 2D and 3D geometry is not trivial. Our method is also 
coupled with level set method to solve moving interface problems 
efficiently.

Merle Craig. 


Microsatellite sequences are simple sequence repeats commonly found in DNA
sequences.  These sequences are prevelent in mammals, and are of great
interest to geneticists because they are important in helping to construct
whole genome genetic maps for various species especially humans. 
Microsatellites are useful for studies in variation at the population
level, and recently, there has been implications that instablity in
certain repeats may be useful in study of some inherited human diseases.
Mutations in DNA, directly influnce the length and variability of
microsatellites, producing instablity in the repeats.  Consequently, being
able to predict/ model these instabilities in microsatellite repeats, is
of high importance.  Several methods and models have been proposed over
time, the most-favored model being the stepwise mutation model.  In this
talk, I will focus on the use of the stepwise mutation model, analysing
its effectivness as a model in predicting the frequencies of alleles in
microsatellites.