Fig. 3: Stiffness influences the temporal dynamics of tip/stalk pattern formation and filopodia activity in silico.

Boxplots of the systematic simulations investigating the effect of YAP/TAZ-Notch interactions on patterning rate (a, c, e, g) and filopodia activity (b, d, f, h). Stiffness did not have any effect without the implementation of YAP/TAZ-Notch interactions (a, b). With only the YAP/TAZ-Dll4 interaction (c, d), only the YAP/TAZ-LFng interaction (e, f) or both interactions (g, h) a biphasic response in terms of patterning rate and a general increase in filopodia activity to increasing stiffness was observed. All simulations were repeated 25 times, and the associated data are represented such that the boxes depict quartiles 2 and 3, the red line inside the box depicts the median, the whiskers indicate the min- and maximum and the red plusses indicate the outliers. The patterning rate was approximated by dividing 24 h by the patterning time; filopodia activity was determined by averaging the amount of filopodia in the timepoints before patterning occurred. The subset of stiffnesses was chosen to improve visibility while still accurately portraying the whole trend.