Understanding how tissues develop and regulate their growth is crucial in biology. Both proliferation and regulation of cells growth are fundamental for the development of healthy tissue in animals and plants, as well as for the progression of tumours. In pseudostratified epithelia, the organisation of the nuclei and their movement inside the tissue influence the final architecture of the tissue and impact growth. In particular, nuclei move along the apical/basal axis during the inter-kinetic phases of the cell cycle. This movement is called the inter-kinetic nuclear movement. Because pseudostratified epithelia have a high density of nuclei, their movement is likely to be influenced by the crowing inside the tissue. We developed an Individual-based model for the interkinetic nuclear movement in pseudostratified epithelia based in a minimisation framework. The model focuses is placed on the nuclei and their deformation. We study the influence of crowding the specific case of the Imaginal Disc of Drosophila and tuned the model with biological data. We then show that the crowding increases the cell cycle duration, resulting in the slow down of growth.
