Abstract
Tissue morphogenesis in multicellular organisms is brought about by spatiotemporal coordination of mechanical and chemical signals. Extensive work on how mechanical forces together with the well‐established morphogen signalling pathways can actively shape living tissues has revealed evolutionary conserved mechanochemical features of embryonic development. More recently, attention has been drawn to the description of tissue material properties and how they can influence certain morphogenetic processes. Interestingly, besides the role of tissue material properties in determining how much tissues deform in response to force application, there is increasing theoretical and experimental evidence, suggesting that tissue material properties can abruptly and drastically change in development. These changes resemble phase transitions, pointing at the intriguing possibility that important morphogenetic processes in development, such as symmetry breaking and self‐organization, might be mediated by tissue phase transitions. In this review, we summarize recent findings on the regulation and role of tissue material properties in the context of the developing embryo. We posit that abrupt changes of tissue rheological properties may have important implications in maintaining the balance between robustness and adaptability during embryonic development.
Highlights
How the single-cell totipotent zygote can transform into a fully functional multicellular organism is a long-standing unresolved problem at the interface of developmental biology, physics and evolution
We summarize and discuss experimental and theoretical work on the characterization and function of tissue-scale rheological properties during embryonic development
Chemical and mechanical signalling influence each other, enabling the generation of positive and negative feedback loops between the two (Chan et al, 2017; Kim et al, 2018; Hannezo & Heisenberg, 2019). Such mechanochemical feedback loops can act at the same scale or across different scales, enabling the system to adapt and self-organize effectively in response to micro- and/or mesoscale stimuli (Paluch, 2018)
Summary
How the single-cell totipotent zygote can transform into a fully functional multicellular organism is a long-standing unresolved problem at the interface of developmental biology, physics and evolution. Imaging the deformation of the droplet shape during the application and removal of the magnetic force, the local tissue mechanical properties (viscosity, elasticity and yield stress) in a small neighbourhood surrounding the FD can be quantified, as demonstrated in the somitic mesoderm of zebrafish embryos (Serwane et al, 2017; Mongera et al, 2018). During the application and release of the pressure, the deformation of the tissue over time is monitored, from which the surface tension, elastic modulus and viscosity can be quantified (Guevorkian et al, 2010; Guevorkian & Maître, 2017) This technique has been widely used to measure tissue viscoelasticity in several embryonic tissues, such as the Xenopus gastrula (von Dassow & Davidson, 2009; von Dassow et al, 2011), the developing chicken heart and brain (Majkut et al, 2013) and the zebrafish blastula (Petridou et al, 2019). We will summarize and discuss recent findings on the Strain
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