Peter Raasch

Modelling and Simulation of Cells in the Colon

"I am doing computer simulations that demonstrate how cells in the large intestine function by self organisation."

Understanding how healthy tissues grow, self-maintain and repair themselves is fundamental to understanding the development of cancer. The tissue we are focusing on is the colon crypt, as 90% of intestinal cancers are cause by mutations in these crypts. With a better understanding of the processes in the colon we hope to elucidate the mechanisms that lead to cancer.

Our questions are: How do cells interact and communicate to form a functional organ? How are signalling molecules utilized by the cell and what is the role of the spatial arrangement in forming biological structures?

Doing basic research that can help to finally fight cancer more effectively is a great motivation to work on in this project. Also, it is fun because you get to understand the spontaneously arising intelligence that even simple groups of molecules or groups of cells biological systems seem to develop using only quite simple forms of interaction.

We developed a novel modeling approach that allows us to approach questions related to the spatial arrangement of cells and spatial signalling. We established scenarios that correspond to biological hypotheses. Using our model we will infer which hypotheses are more plausible and draw conclusions from what was necessary to bring about realistic biological behaviour.

We will predict plausible mechanisms that bring about functional behaviour in the colonic crypt, with regard to the communication between cells and their spatial arrangement.