Dr Stefan Harmansa

Morphomechanics – Shaping Growing Tissues

Morphogenesis delineates the complex process of shape generation during embryonic development. Morphogenesis is an intrinsically mechanical process where cellular activities, like contractility or growth, lead to stresses that mechanically mould tissues into their complex 3D shapes. Proper morphology is essential for organ functionality and defects in morphogenesis are linked to developmental disorders and disease.

I am particularly interested in the interplay between growing epithelial tissues and their basement membranes (BMs), specialised sheet-like extracellular matrices. Like the foundation of a building, BMs acts as base for epithelial cells and their mechanical properties (such as stiffness) as well as their growth properties directly influence cell and tissue morphology. I recently demonstrated that differential growth between a tissue and its BM leads to the accumulation of growth-induced mechanical stresses that guide tissue morphology (Harmansa et.al. 2023). Using a combination of Drosophila genetics, advanced imaging techniques, quantitative biophysical tools and data-informed modelling my group aims to uncover how such stresses arise during tissue growth and how they guide the mechanics of morphogenesis.

We are a newly established group that officially joined LSI in February 2024 and will be supported by a Wellcome Career Development Award. For more details on our current research, news and open positions please visit our group’s webpage.