CMB Oxford - Chemotaxis as a Mechanism for Morphogenesis Chemotaxis as a Mechanism for Morphogenesis. They have been criticised because of the need for tight control of a number of parameters to robustly generate specific patterning sequences. In this thesis, motivated by a number of developmental processes, we derive models of this type and show that they can exhibit the desired patterns under the control of only a small number of parameters. Mathematical modelling to date has focussed on chemotactic response to a single chemical species. We show how models of this form can exhibit novel travelling wave behaviour qualitatively similar to the movements occurring during formation of the primitive streak.
Biological evidence suggests that in other systems, multiple chemical cues are involved.
We generalise the chemotactic-cell movement model to include response to several chemicals. It is shown that this extension leads to increased complexity in both the chemotactic sensitivity response and the spatial patterning exhibited. We exploit these results in a hybrid between a chemotactic and reaction-diffusion model to explain complex pigment patterning in a number of animal species. This naturally leads to a novel interpretation of the chemotactic response as a form of positional information. The effects of a growing domain are incorporated into the hybrid model.