Doctoral thesis
OA Policy
English

Identifying the impact of spherical confinement on epithelial packing

Number of pages159
Imprimatur date2025-03-12
Defense date2025-03-12
Abstract

Epithelial tissues exhibit diverse geometries to properly carry their role as barriers, ensuring proper transport and tissue integrity. While biochemical regulation of epithelial organization is well studied, the mechanical factors shaping 3D cell geometry remain less understood. In this thesis, I investigated how epithelial cell shape and tissue organization was influenced by cell density, confinement, substrate adhesion, and curvature. Using an encapsulation system where cells grow within spherical alginate capsules, I systematically varied mechanical parameters and tracked cell organization within tissues of increasing densities. I developed a custom 3D segmentation pipeline to extract over 20 geometric parameters per cell and reported that cell volume decreases with density prior to confluency, while tissue height appears tightly regulated. This height control depended on substrate properties, particularly the rigidity. Notably, we observed that all tissues showed apical-basal asymmetries, which were enhanced in tall tissues. These findings demonstrate the value of in dept morphological analysis to link tissue mechanics, cell geometry, and tissue architecture.

Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
PERNOLLET, Guillaume Eric Arnaud. Identifying the impact of spherical confinement on epithelial packing. Thèse, 2025. doi: 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:185756
Main files (1)
Thesis
accessLevelPublic
Secondary files (1)
Imprimatur
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
167views
320downloads

Technical informations

Creation28/05/2025 23:19:10
First validation20/06/2025 12:48:26
Update06/02/2026 16:50:40
Status update06/02/2026 16:50:40
Last indexation06/02/2026 16:50:41
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack