SysVert: a new package for modelling tissues using vertex model

CECCARELLI, ALBERTO; BORGES, AUGUSTO; CURA COSTA, EMANUEL; ALVAREZ HUGO ARIEL; VIDAL, VANESSA; CHARA OSVALDO

Conferencia; XLVII Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Biofísica; 2018

In our group, we are developing SysVert, a new package encoded in Python to simulate tissues using vertex models. In these approximations, cells are modelled as polygons and tissue dynamics are governed by forces acting on the vertices of those polygons. Although other implementations exist, most of them have a drawback: the user needs to have certain knowledge of computer programming to successfully use them. In contrast, our package is designed to be user-friendly, with an intuitive graphical interface and it will be open source, to allow for a dynamic feedback between users and developers to, in turn, introduce new features and improvements in the package.SysVert has several features that permit the user to simulate a wide arrange of tissues in different conditions. For example, the package allows the user to define cell types within a tissue and different rules of cell proliferation, apoptosis or topological rearrangements. Finally, the user of SysVert can define chemical signals like morphogens which can interact with the cells allowing multi-scaling systems biology strategies.Here, we present simulations performed with a pre-release version of SysVert, as a proof of concept of the package capabilities.