Speaker
Description
Lipid droplet dynamics during adipogenesis play a central role in adipocyte function and metabolic health, yet the mechanisms governing droplet formation and growth remain poorly quantified. We present a mechanistic ordinary differential equation (ODE) model describing the evolution of lipid droplet size distributions measured in time-resolved imaging experiments of differentiating adipocytes. The model captures three key processes --droplet biogenesis, fusion, and lipid accumulation -- and predicts the dynamics of droplet populations across discrete size classes. The model is calibrated to CRISPR knockdown adipogenesis assays from the Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford, where lipid droplet sizes are quantified from brightfield imaging over a 14-day differentiation period. Sensitivity analysis shows that biogenesis primarily determines droplet abundance, whereas growth controls total lipid storage, with fusion contributing more weakly. This approach enables gene perturbations to be interpreted in terms of their effects on underlying droplet processes, providing a tractable framework for extracting mechanistic insight from large-scale adipogenesis datasets.
