Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2009
Skeletal patterning in the vertebrate limb,i.e., the spatiotemporal regulation of cartilage differentiation(chondrogenesis) during embryogenesis and regeneration, is oneof the best studied examples of a multicellular developmental process.Recently [Alber et al., The morphostatic limit for a model ofskeletal pattern formation in the vertebrate limb, Bulletin ofMathematical Biology, 2008, v70, pp. 460-483], a simplified two-equationreaction-diffusion system was developed to describe the interaction of two ofthe key morphogens: the activator and an activator-dependent inhibitor ofprecartilage condensation formation. A discontinuous Galerkin (DG)finite element method was applied to solve this nonlinear system on complexdomains to study the effects of domain geometry on the pattern generated [Zhu etal., Application of Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for reaction-diffusionsystems in developmental biology, Journal of Scientific Computing, 2009, v40,pp. 391-418]. In this paper, we extend these previous results and develop a DGfinite element model in a moving and deforming domain for skeletal patternformation in the vertebrate limb. Simulations reflect the actual dynamics oflimb development and indicate the important role played by the geometryof the undifferentiated apical zone.