Difference between revisions of "Team:KU Leuven/Project"

This year, the KU Leuven team decided to work on the fundamental mechanisms that shape our society, namely patterns. Our mission is to generate complex and astonishing biological patterns and push them in a desired direction. Guiding the pattern will happen through the applied stimuli. These will impact both the swimming behavior of the cells and the cell-cell interactions. Depending on their location on the plate, the combined effect of both characteristics will cause aggregation and dispersion of the cells, creating a pattern.

A better understanding of these molecular interactions in combination with the appropriate and detailed predictive mathematical models will be advantageous in a lot of different fields, ranging from construction and design, to medicine and even electronics. Tumor formation and tissue regeneration are two examples where the medical world could benefit from a more thorough knowledge of pattern formation. Furthermore, the cells can be engineered to precipitate a network of bio-minerals, opening exciting new perspectives for the production of microstructured bio-composite materials. In the long term, this could lead to applications in miniature electrical conductors and/or electrical circuits.