Estimating surface growth rates from changes in curvature (Q1061625)

The object of this paper is to provide a quantitative analogue of the former qualitative approach, whereby the change in intrinsic geometry of the surface in its entirety is used as an experimental variable. In a variety of biological situations, growth may be seen as a surface phenomenon. Much of the information embodied in the shape of a surface lies in its intrinsic three-dimensional geometry, and this information is lost in the process of orthographic projection. A technique for extracting growth data from analysis of the change of the intrinsic geometry of the surface in three dimensions is developed. The shape of a biological surface is regarded as an observable and change of shape may be treated as a measure of the growth patterns underlying a process. The problem may be expressed formally as follows. A biological surface S grows into another surface T. Let \(O: S\to T\) be the map which takes a point on S to the eventual position on T of the material at that point. Conditions on O which would enable the author to determine it uniquely from a knowledge of the geometry of S and T are considered. It is shown that isotropy and radial symmetry are sufficient to uniquely determine O and its associated growth function. Differential equations for these are given and, as examples, these equations are applied to a familiar model of tip growth in fungi and to a new model of the development of the cerebral vesicles from the neural tube of the embryonic mouse. The principle used is the Dirichlet integral of the logarithmic growth factor over the initial surface S. It is shown that this principle reduces to that of selecting the symmetric map in the symmetric case and is therefore a valid generalization. The method outlined in this paper uses the intrinsic three-dimensional geometry of a biological surface as an experimental variable.