Determine the biochemical mechanisms underlying structural density deviations

Determine the upstream biochemical processes controlling development that generate the time-independent structural density deviations in Drosophila pupal wing tissue, and thereby derive a theoretical prediction for their spatial correlation function.

Background

The model separates density fluctuations in the Drosophila pupal wing epithelium into an annealed, time-dependent component and a quenched, time-independent structural component. The authors empirically extract the structural density correlation function from experimental data and fit it with an exponential decay because the mechanisms producing these deviations are not incorporated into the theoretical model.

Resolving this problem would connect the observed spatial organization of density—including persistent deviations associated with developmental structures such as veins—to the upstream biochemical processes that control tissue development, replacing the empirical correlation model with a mechanistic theoretical prediction.

References

We do not have a theoretical prediction for this: it is driven by upstream biochemical processes controlling development that we do not yet understand.

— Quantifying cell shape and density fluctuations in epithelial tissue in vivo  (2609.09874 - Turley et al., 9 Sep 2026) in Section “Fitting parameters of the model to pupal wing tissue,” subsection “Fluctuations, correlations and experiments”