Ingression-type cell migration drives vegetal endoderm internalisation in the Xenopus gastrula

Abstract
Article and author information
Metrics

Abstract

During amphibian gastrulation, presumptive endoderm is internalised as part of vegetal rotation, a large-scale movement that encompasses the whole vegetal half of the embryo. It has been considered a gastrulation process unique to amphibians, but we show that at the cell level, endoderm internalisation exhibits characteristics reminiscent of bottle cell formation and ingression, known mechanisms of germ layer internalisation. During ingression proper, cells leave a single-layered epithelium. In vegetal rotation, the process occurs in a multilayered cell mass; we refer to it as ingression-type cell migration. Endoderm cells move by amoeboid shape changes, but in contrast to other instances of amoeboid migration, trailing edge retraction involves ephrinB1-dependent macropinocytosis and trans-endocytosis. Moreover, although cells are separated by wide gaps, they are connected by filiform protrusions, and their migration depends on C-cadherin and the matrix protein fibronectin. Cells move in the same direction but at different velocities, to rearrange by differential migration.

Article and author information

Author details

Jason Wen Hui Wen

Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7402-5073
Rudolf Winklbauer

Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

For correspondence
r.winklbauer@utoronto.ca

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0628-0897

Funding

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-53075)

Rudolf Winklbauer

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

Ethics

Animal experimentation: Research animals were used in accordance with guidelines approved by the University Animal Care Committee (Protocol no. 20011765, University of Toronto, Canada).

Copyright

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.