[LoopNet] Project Morpho launching on April 1st

[Pierre Galipot]

Dear colleagues,

I hope this mail finds you well.


As promised during my presentation, here is a proposition of project for
the structuring og the Morphogenesis research and community.

I'd be delighted to have you (and your collaborators) join us if you're
interested in the project.


Please find below a detailed summary.

Very sincerely,

Pierre Galipot

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2335-9556


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Project Morpho Summary


I am writing to you as a researcher in biological morphogenesis, currently
at the edge between a postdoc and (hopefully) a position in academics.
Since my PhD, I have enjoyed trying to decipher the formation of shapes and
patterns, in plants, animals, or fungi, like PGTCPs (Turing patterns
disrupted by growth), checkerboard or cracking patterns. Nevertheless, I am
now motivated to put myself in a complementary position to teams working on
morphogenesis. I would like to make links between research works in very
different taxa, scales or approaches and therefore strengthen the links
between morphogeneticists by helping build a proper ‘morphogenesis
community’.

This brought me to ask myself the following questions and to try to propose
answers:

Can we define and classify morphogenetic processes and (biological) shapes?
If so, how to define the categories' boundaries? Would it be relevant in
terms of development and evolution or is it only a human mental abstract
construction? Would it be useful for researchers in morphogenesis to have
such categories? If so, could we imagine a universal way to express
morphogenesis events, in a sort of logical formula (or should I say a
FORMula)?

Here's how far I've come:

Yes, shapes can be named and classified, in fact it is already done in
literature although not harmonized. We might find a balance between a
precise mathematical description (e.g. a cone) and be driven by the
biological function(s) to help name and delimitate them (e.g. a spike). To
cope with the immense number of potential categories of biological forms,
we should first list those produced by the morphogenetic mechanisms that
will be identified.

Morphogenetic mechanisms/processes are also already (but partially)
described and named in the literature (e.g. Turing mechanism). Two kinds of
mechanisms come to my mind, the first one able to create a shape/pattern
alone (a generator) and the other one only able to modify (a modulator).

Yes, it should be useful to name and build categories, at least to pinpoint
evolutionary convergences. For example, two teams have independently
described a common way to produce a complex color pattern, in shells of
mollusks and feathers of birds. We would benefit to give it a name (e.g.
Printing mechanism), to pinpoint the common features and differences, and
to ask ourselves if it has been selected in other taxa during Evolution.

Finally, by using the precedent categories of shapes and mechanisms,
together with simple logical symbols (but precisely described) like « + »,
« x », « → » etc., we should be able to represent a morphogenesis sequence.

And now?

Of course, I could try to write an article about it and to submit it to
reviewers, but I think it would be a thousand times more interesting and
useful to the community to try to build it together. After taking advice
since a little less than one year, I have finally come with a proposition,
and if you are interested in, it will be available in two levels of
implication, the choice being yours:


   - *First, a survey to evaluate the usefulness of this project to the
   very diverse community of people working on shapes, patterns, and/or their
   formation, and to collect your feelings about the questions asked earlier.*



   - *Secondly, a collaborative place to debate, improve or completely
   redesign the project, on a Slack-type platform, well structured to conduct
   the discussion remotely while aiming for a certain efficiency. I think that
   a couple of months to a semester should be sufficient to achieve a
   satisfactory final form. If a consensus is reached, the result would
   logically be (at least) an article with all the signatories, as in a
   consortium, and the construction of databases.*


To make this project as relevant as possible, we need people from diverse
domains of research (biology, physics, mathematics), objects and scale of
interest (molecules, cells, organisms, models), and of course
representative of biological diversity.

I plan to release the platform in two weeks, the 1st of April, but don’t
worry, it would be possible to join the project after that. In the
meantime, the best way to express your interest about this project is
either to respond to this mail and/or to fill some information on this
Google Sheets link:

Project Morpho
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12-PQ8-Dy1U3NzsYyxxzbP8Oz-FT_9Lw46KxSdxE_EYs/edit>

To simplify the search for contacts, I have focused majoritarily on team
leaders, but this is of course open for everybody in research, as PhD
students, postdocs or early career researchers would be precious to give a
fresh impulse to this project.

I'd be then infinitely grateful if you could pass this message on to your
colleagues and students, as well as to anyone else I might have forgotten,
who might be interested in participating.

Very sincerely,

Pierre
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