Morpheus: Science for Life and Art

A grand challenge in the life sciences is cracking the code of biological self-organisation and morphogenesis, as started by Alan Turing with his work on „The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis“. We here present Morpheus, a user-friendly modeling and simulation framework for spatio-temporal dynamics in multi-scale and multi-cellular systems. In collaboration with Stan Marée from Cardiff University, we’re applying Morpheus to Turing patterns and fruiting body formation in a social microorganism termed Dicty. Dicty is a model organism in the life sciences for studying the transition from uni-cellular to multi-cellular life. Our simulation results yield insights into Turing’s challenge of morphogenesis and provide a new perspective on the art piece „Biomorphe Skulpturen“ by André Tempel in the APB foyer.