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Updated: Nov 4, 2025
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A Comprehensive Protocol for Manual Segmentation of the Medial Temporal Lobe Structures
Published on: July 2, 2014
20.6K
Time and space in segmentation
Erik Clark1,2
1Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, 210 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Interface Focus
|May 31, 2021
Summary
This study models cellular dynamics to explain how animal segments form. It reveals how timing and spatial cues within the segment addition zone (SAZ) drive segmentation patterns and evolution.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Biology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Theoretical Biology
Background:
- Arthropod segmentation and vertebrate somitogenesis are key models for studying developmental patterning.
- Despite extensive research, fundamental questions about segment formation remain unresolved, including spatial organization, polarization, axial variation, and evolutionary origins of simultaneous patterning.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the mechanistic origins of spatial organization, polarization, axial variation, and evolutionary origins of simultaneous patterning in segmenting systems.
- To explore these problems using coarse-grained models of cross-regulating dynamical processes.
Main Methods:
- Simulated interactions between an 'oscillator', a 'switch', and 'timers' within a cell row undergoing axial elongation.
- Compared cell-autonomous models with variants incorporating positional information to analyze patterning dynamics.
Main Results:
- Successfully reproduced essential patterning behaviors of segmenting systems.
- Demonstrated that scaling relationships, wave patterns, and patterning dynamics depend on temporal versus spatial regulation of the segment addition zone (SAZ).
- Identified three mechanisms for polarizing oscillator output and showed continuity between sequential and simultaneous segmentation modes.
Conclusions:
- Coarse-grained models can elucidate fundamental principles of developmental patterning.
- The interplay between temporal and spatial information is crucial for segment formation and variation.
- Found significant dynamical and regulatory continuity between sequential and simultaneous segmentation, offering insights into evolutionary origins.
