Controlling contractile instabilities in the actomyosin cortex
- Technical University Dresden, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany
- Technische Universität, Germany
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.
Article and author information
Author details
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.
Copyright
© 2017, Nishikawa et al.
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.
Metrics
-
- 4,620
- views
-
- 1,064
- downloads
-
- 92
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
