Controlling contractile instabilities in the actomyosin cortex

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Abstract

The actomyosin cell cortex is an active contractile material for driving cell- and tissue morphogenesis. The cortex has a tendency to form a pattern of myosin foci, which is a signature of potentially unstable behavior. How a system that is prone to such instabilities can reliably drive morphogenesis remains an outstanding question. Here we report that in Caenorhabditis elegans zygote, feedback between active RhoA and myosin induces a contractile instability in the cortex. We discover that an independent RhoA pacemaking oscillator controls this instability, generating a pulsatory pattern of myosin foci and preventing the collapse of cortical material into a few dynamic contracting regions. Our work reveals how contractile instabilities that are natural to occur in mechanically active media can be biochemically controlled in order to robustly drive morphogenetic events.

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Masatoshi Nishikawa

Biotechnology Center, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Sundar Ram Naganathan

Biotechnology Center, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Frank Jülicher

Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

Competing interests
Frank Jülicher, Reviewing editor, eLife.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4731-9185
Stephan W Grill

Biotechnology Center, Technische Universität, Dresden, Germany

For correspondence
stephan.grill@biotec.tu-dresden.de

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SPP 1782,GSC 97,GR 3271/2,GR 3271/3,GR 3271/4)

Stephan W Grill

European Research Council (281903)

Stephan W Grill

Human Frontier Science Program (RGP0023/2014)

Stephan W Grill

European Commission (ITN grant - 281903)

Stephan W Grill

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Stephan W Grill

European Commission (ITN grant - 641639)

Stephan W Grill

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.