Fig. 4: Simulation of 3D cell organization pseudostratified epithelia.
From: SimuCell3D: three-dimensional simulation of tissue mechanics with cell polarization
a, Initial geometry imported into SimuCell3D: a patch of 70 cells from the developing pseudostratified mouse lung epithelium, segmented and triangulated from light-sheet imaging64. 49 gray cells act as rigid boundaries for the 21 simulated pink cells. b, All cells contain a nucleus (blue). c, On the basis of the cell surface tension and adhesion strength, the cells adopt different shapes (regimes I and II). d, Mean fraction of cell surface area in contact with other cells (red line in illustration), as a function of the adhesion strength and cortical tension. e, Mean cell coordination number in the same parameter space. f, Mean cell deformation as a function of the nuclear surface tension. Error bars represent the s.e.m., n = 21 nuclei. g, Average nuclear sphericity as a function of the nucleus area elasticity modulus and target isoperimetric ratio. Isolines in d,e,g represent support vector machine discriminants. Dashed curves in d–g represent the physiological values measured from the segmented geometries. Each data point corresponds to the equilibrium state obtained from one numerical simulation.
