Li Xin, Huebner Robert J, Williams Margot L K, Sawyer Jessica, Peifer Mark, Wallingford John B, Thirumalai D
Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Department of Molecular Bioscience, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
bioRxiv. 2024 Jul 16:2024.07.11.603175. doi: 10.1101/2024.07.11.603175.
Cells undergo dramatic changes in morphology during embryogenesis, yet how these changes affect the formation of ordered tissues remains elusive. Here we find that the emergence of a nematic liquid crystal phase occurs in cells during gastrulation in the development of embryos of fish, frogs, and fruit flies. Moreover, the spatial correlations in all three organisms are long-ranged and follow a similar power-law decay with less than unity for the nematic order parameter, suggesting a common underlying physical mechanism unifies events in these distantly related species. All three species exhibit similar propagation of the nematic phase, reminiscent of nucleation and growth phenomena. Finally, we use a theoretical model along with disruptions of cell adhesion and cell specification to characterize the minimal features required for formation of the nematic phase. Our results provide a framework for understanding a potentially universal features of metazoan embryogenesis and shed light on the advent of ordered structures during animal development.
在胚胎发生过程中，细胞的形态会发生显著变化，然而这些变化如何影响有序组织的形成仍不清楚。在这里，我们发现在鱼类、青蛙和果蝇胚胎发育的原肠胚形成过程中，细胞会出现向列型液晶相。此外，这三种生物中的空间相关性都是长程的，并且遵循类似的幂律衰减，向列序参数小于1，这表明一种共同的潜在物理机制统一了这些远缘物种中的事件。这三个物种都表现出类似的向列相传播，让人联想到成核和生长现象。最后，我们使用一个理论模型以及细胞黏附和细胞特化的破坏来描述形成向列相所需的最小特征。我们的结果为理解后生动物胚胎发生的潜在普遍特征提供了一个框架，并揭示了动物发育过程中有序结构的出现。
