On a Model for the Evolution of Morphogens in a Growing Tissue

We analyze a recently proposed model [I. Averbukh et al., Development, 141 (2014), pp. 2150--2156] for the regulation of growth and patterning in developing tissues by diffusing morphogens. We show that solutions of the underlying coupled systems of nonlinear PDEs exist, are unique, and are stable in a suitable sense. The key tool in the analysis is the transformation of the underlying system to a porous medium equation. Numerical experiments illustrating the model are also presented.