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Actomyosin pulsing rescues embryonic tissue folding from disruption by myosin fluctuations

View ORCID ProfileHongkang Zhu, View ORCID ProfileBen O’Shaughnessy
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.16.533016
Hongkang Zhu
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
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Ben O’Shaughnessy
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
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  • For correspondence: bo8@columbia.edu
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Abstract

During early development, myosin II mechanically reshapes and folds embryo tissue. A much-studied example is ventral furrow formation in Drosophila, marking the onset of gastrulation. Furrowing is driven by contraction of actomyosin networks on apical cell surfaces, but how the myosin patterning encodes tissue shape is unclear, and elastic models failed to reproduce essential features of experimental cell contraction profiles. The myosin patterning exhibits substantial cell-to-cell fluctuations with pulsatile time-dependence, a striking but unexplained feature of morphogenesis in many organisms. Here, using biophysical modeling we find viscous forces offer the principle resistance to actomyosin-driven apical constriction. In consequence, tissue shape is encoded in the direction-dependent curvature of the myosin patterning which orients an anterior-posterior furrow. Tissue contraction is highly sensitive to cell-to-cell myosin fluctuations, explaining furrowing failure in genetically perturbed embryos whose fluctuations are temporally persistent. In wild-type embryos, this catastrophic outcome is averted by pulsatile myosin time-dependence, a time-averaging effect that rescues furrowing. This low pass filter mechanism may underlie the usage of actomyosin pulsing in diverse morphogenetic processes across many organisms.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted March 18, 2023.
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Actomyosin pulsing rescues embryonic tissue folding from disruption by myosin fluctuations
Hongkang Zhu, Ben O’Shaughnessy
bioRxiv 2023.03.16.533016; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.16.533016
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Actomyosin pulsing rescues embryonic tissue folding from disruption by myosin fluctuations
Hongkang Zhu, Ben O’Shaughnessy
bioRxiv 2023.03.16.533016; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.16.533016

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