1. Epithelial organ shape is generated by patterned actomyosin contractility and maintained by the extracellular matrix
- Author
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Ali Nematbakhsh, Megan Levis, Nilay Kumar, Mark Alber, Jeremiah J. Zartman, Weitao Chen, and Maini, Philip K
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Bending ,Cell Membranes ,Mathematical Sciences ,Epithelium ,Extracellular matrix ,0302 clinical medicine ,Wings ,Potential Energy ,Morphogenesis ,Wings, Animal ,Phosphorylation ,Biology (General) ,Staining ,0303 health sciences ,Ecology ,Chemistry ,Physics ,Drosophila Melanogaster ,Classical Mechanics ,Eukaryota ,Cell Staining ,Adhesion ,Animal Models ,Actomyosin ,Biological Sciences ,Deformation ,Cell biology ,Extracellular Matrix ,Insects ,Imaginal disc ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Computational Theory and Mathematics ,Imaginal Discs ,Experimental Organism Systems ,Modeling and Simulation ,Physical Sciences ,Drosophila ,Cellular Structures and Organelles ,Research Article ,Arthropoda ,Bioinformatics ,QH301-705.5 ,Organogenesis ,Bioengineering ,Research and Analysis Methods ,Contractility ,03 medical and health sciences ,Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience ,Model Organisms ,Information and Computing Sciences ,Extracellular ,medicine ,Genetics ,Animals ,Molecular Biology ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,030304 developmental biology ,Basement membrane ,Damage Mechanics ,Wing ,Animal ,Organisms ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Cell Biology ,Invertebrates ,Cell staining ,030104 developmental biology ,Specimen Preparation and Treatment ,Biophysics ,Animal Studies ,Generic health relevance ,Zoology ,Entomology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Developmental Biology - Abstract
Epithelial sheets define organ architecture during development. Here, we employed an iterative multiscale computational modeling and quantitative experimental approach to decouple direct and indirect effects of actomyosin-generated forces, nuclear positioning, extracellular matrix, and cell-cell adhesion in shaping Drosophila wing imaginal discs. Basally generated actomyosin forces generate epithelial bending of the wing disc pouch. Surprisingly, acute pharmacological inhibition of ROCK-driven actomyosin contractility does not impact the maintenance of tissue height or curved shape. Computational simulations show that ECM tautness provides only a minor contribution to modulating tissue shape. Instead, passive ECM pre-strain serves to maintain the shape independent from actomyosin contractility. These results provide general insight into how the subcellular forces are generated and maintained within individual cells to induce tissue curvature. Thus, the results suggest an important design principle of separable contributions from ECM prestrain and actomyosin tension during epithelial organogenesis and homeostasis., Author summary The regulation and maintenance of an organ’s shape is a major outstanding problem in developmental biology. An iterative approach combining multiscale computational modelling and quantitative experimental approach was used to decouple direct and indirect roles of subcellular mechanical forces, nuclear positioning, and extracellular matrix in shaping the major axis of the wing pouch during the larval stage in fruit flies, which serves as a prototypical system for investigating epithelial morphogenesis. The research findings in this paper demonstrate that subcellular mechanical forces can effectively generate the curved tissue profile, while extracellular matrix is necessary for preserving the bent shape even in the absence of subcellular mechanical forces once the shape is generated. The developed integrated multiscale modelling environment can be readily extended to generate and test hypothesized novel mechanisms of developmental dynamics of other systems, including organoids that consist of several cellular and extracellular matrix layers.
- Published
- 2020