PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Adan Olguin-Olguin
AU  - Anne Aalto
AU  - Benoît Maugis
AU  - Michal Reichman-Fried
AU  - Erez Raz
TI  - Chemokine-biased robust self-organizing polarization of migrating cells <em>in vivo</em>
AID  - 10.1101/857623
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 857623
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/27/857623.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/27/857623.full
AB  - The mechanisms facilitating the establishment of front-rear polarity in migrating cells are not fully understood, in particular in the context of bleb-driven directional migration. To gain further insight into this issue we utilized the migration of zebrafish primordial germ cells (PGCs) as an in vivo model. We followed the molecular and morphological cascade that converts apolar cells into polarized bleb-forming motile cells and analyzed the cross dependency among the different cellular functions we identified. Our results underline the critical role of antagonistic interactions between the front and the rear, in particular the role of biophysical processes including formation of barriers and transport of specific proteins to the back of the cell. These interactions direct the formation of blebs to a specific part of the cell that is specified as the cell front. In this way, spontaneous cell polarization facilitates non-directional cell motility and when biased by chemokine signals leads to migration towards specific locations.