Wavelength of a Turing-type mechanism regulates the morphogenesis of meshwork patterns

Abstract

Abstract The meshwork pattern is a significant pattern in the development of biological tissues and organs. It is necessary to explore the mathematical mechanism of meshwork pattern formation. In this paper, we found that the meshwork pattern is formed by four kinds of stalk behaviours: stalk extension, tip bifurcation, side branching and tip fusion. The Turing-type pattern underlying the meshwork pattern is a Turing spot pattern, which indicates that the Turing instability of the spot pattern promotes activator peak formation and then guides the formation of meshwork patterns. Then, we found that the Turing wavelength decreased in turn from tip bifurcation to side branching to tip fusion via statistical evaluation. Through the functional relationship between the Turing wavelength and model parameters ( $$\upvarepsilon ,{ \rho }_{A}$$ ε , ρ A and $${\rho }_{H}$$ ρ H ), we found that parameters $$\upvarepsilon $$ ε and $${\rho }_{H}$$ ρ H had monotonic effects on the Turing wavelength and that parameter $${\rho }_{A}$$ ρ A had nonmonotonic effects. Furthermore, we performed simulations of local meshwork pattern formation under variable model parameter values. The simulation results verified the corresponding relationship between the Turing wavelength and stalk behaviours and the functional relationship between the Turing wavelength and model parameters. The simulation results showed that the Turing wavelength regulated the meshwork pattern and that the small Turing wavelength facilitated dense meshwork pattern formation. Our work provides novel insight into and understanding of the formation of meshwork patterns. We believe that studies associated with network morphogenesis can benefit from our work.