Linus Schumacher

- Centre for Regenerative Medicine
Contact details
- Tel: +44 (0)131 651 9526
- Email: Linus.Schumacher@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Centre for Regenerative Medicine,
Institute for Regeneration and Repair,
The University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh BioQuarter,
5 Little France Drive, - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH16 4UU
Background
I moved to the CRM as a Chancellor’s Fellow in 2018. Previously I was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, where I also obtained my DPhil, based at the Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology. For my undergraduate degree I read Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
Applicants requiring funding should also consider the following doctoral programmes: MAC-MIGS (https://www.mac-migs.ac.uk), Biomedical AI (http://web.inf.ed.ac.uk/cdt/biomedical-ai), Precision Medicine (https://www.ed.ac.uk/usher/precision-medicine)
Current PhD students supervised
- Miguel Robles Garcia. Forward engineering of pattern formation: Models and experiments towards predictive multicellular self-organisation (co-supervised with Guilaume Blin)
- Anna Popravko. Defining the transcriptome of the first functional haematopoietic stem cells in the mouse embryo (co-supervised with Elaine Dzierzak)
- Viktoria Freingruber. Collective chemotaxis: how cells work together to migrate more efficiently (co-supervised with Kevin Painter & Mariya Ptashnyk)
- Rodrigo Garcia. Development of mathematical tools for identifying hallmarks of regulatory mechanisms in stem cell lineages (co-supervised with Ramon Grima)
- Jorge Lemos. Computational modelling of human stem cell fitness in ageing blood (co-supervised with Tamir Chandra and Kristina Kirschner)
Research summary
Computational biology of cell populations
Tissue development and regeneration can be seen as group behaviours of cell populations. To understand development and regeneration, we need to consider the interactions between stem cells and the rest of the cells that make up a tissue. We use mathematical models and computational simulations to predict tissue behaviour from the behaviour of cells. This allows us to develop and test hypotheses in complex biological systems and discern informative patterns in experimental data.
Read an accessible description of Linus Schumacher’s research on the Data-Driven Innovation website: https://ddi.ac.uk/chancellors/linus-schumacher/
Aims and areas of interest
Tissue regeneration is an emergent phenomenon at the scale of cell populations – an individual cell only proliferates, remains quiescent, or dies, but does not regenerate. This poses a constraint on the ways in which cells can get together to build and maintain tissues, as only some sets of microscopic mechanisms, or “rules”, will enable regeneration after injury. In healthy tissues, cell populations also have to self-regulate so as not to over-proliferate and grow in an unregulated, or malignant, manner. These opposing demands raise a basic question: How does regeneration only happen when needed, and how does it know when to stop?
Despite a rich history of insights from developmental biology, quantitative understanding of regeneration and repair remains elusive. Recent advances in stem cell biology, imaging tools, single cell sequencing, and computational biology are poised to change this. Our interest lies in using computational modelling to predict outcomes of hypothesised regulatory mechanisms in development and regeneration. By developing theoretical models we also bring new perspectives on how to interrogate experimental data. We work closely with experimental collaborators with the aim to formulate principles that apply to multiple biological systems, gain insight into misregulation in disease, and inform improvements to regenerative therapy.
Current research interests
Bayesian inference of cell state transitions, Data-driven modelling of immune cell interactions in tissue regeneration and repair, Quantitative analysis and modelling of immune cell migration in wound response, Clonal dynamics under homeostatic feedback, mutation competition, and ageingPast research interests
Neural crest cell migration, Collective behaviour of C. elegans nematodes, Noise-induced phenomena in stochastic pattern formationAffiliated research centres
Current project grants
University of Edinburgh Chancellor's Fellowship
Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard Award
Wellcome Leap Delta Tissue grant (as co-I)
Leverhulme research grant (as co-I)
Past project grants
EPSRC Doctoral Prize
Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund
-
Live cell tracking of macrophage efferocytosis during Drosophila embryo development in vivo
In:
Science, vol. 375, pp. 1182-1187
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abl4430
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Comparison of solitary and collective foraging strategies of Caenorhabditis elegans in patchy food distributions
In:
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0382
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Coupled differentiation and division of embryonic stem cells inferred from clonal snapshots
In:
Physical Biology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1478-3975/aba041
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Persistent and polarised global actin flow is essential for directionality during cell migration
(12 pages)
In:
Nature Cell Biology, vol. 21, pp. 1370–1381
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-019-0411-5
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Shared behavioral mechanisms underlie C. elegans aggregation and swarming
(32 pages)
In:
eLIFE, vol. 8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43318
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Neural crest migration with continuous cell states
In:
Journal of Theoretical Biology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2019.01.029
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
The devil is in the mesoscale: Mechanical and behavioural heterogeneity in collective cell movement
In:
Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.semcdb.2018.06.003
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Review article (E-pub ahead of print) -
DAN (NBL1) promotes collective neural crest migration by restraining uncontrolled invasion
(16 pages)
In:
Journal of Cell Biology, vol. 216, pp. 3339-3354
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201612169
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Self-organization process in newborn skin organoid formation inspires strategy to restore hair regeneration of adult cells
(10 pages)
In:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, pp. E7101-E7110
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1700475114
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Semblance of Heterogeneity in Collective Cell Migration
(10 pages)
In:
Cell Systems, vol. 5, pp. 119-+
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2017.06.006
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Multidisciplinary approaches to understanding collective cell migration in developmental biology
(10 pages)
In:
Open Biology, vol. 6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsob.160056
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Review article (Published) -
VEGF signals induce trailblazer cell identity that drives neural crest migration
(14 pages)
In:
Developmental Biology, vol. 407, pp. 12-25
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2015.08.011
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Neural crest migration is driven by a few trailblazer cells with a unique molecular signature narrowly confined to the invasive front
(12 pages)
In:
Development, vol. 142, pp. 2014-2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.117507
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Noise-induced temporal dynamics in Turing systems
(10 pages)
In:
Physical Review E, vol. 87
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.87.042719
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
How liquid is biological signalling?
(10 pages)
In:
Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 410, pp. 1003-1012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2008.10.037
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
A statistical analysis of receptor clustering using random graphs
(4 pages)
Research output: › Conference contribution (Published)
Guillaume Blin (University of Edinburgh)
Tamir Chandra (University of Edinburgh)
Yi Feng (University of Edinburgh)
Alex Fletcher (University of Sheffield)
Kristina Kirschner (University of Glasgow)
Jochen Kursawe (University of St Andrews)
Anestis Tsakiridis (University of Sheffield)
Will Wood (University of Edinburgh)
Val Wilson (University of Edinburgh)