Epithelial colonies in vitro elongate through collective effects
- Laboratory of Cell Physics ISIS/IGBMC, CNRS and University of Strasbourg, France
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
- The Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom
- Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany
Abstract
Epithelial tissues of the developing embryos elongate by different mechanisms, such as neighbor exchange, cell elongation, and oriented cell division. Since autonomous tissue self-organization is influenced by external cues such as morphogen gradients or neighboring tissues, it is difficult to distinguish intrinsic from directed tissue behavior. The mesoscopic processes leading to the different mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we study the spontaneous elongation behavior of spreading circular epithelial colonies in vitro. By quantifying deformation kinematics at multiple scales, we report that global elongation happens primarily due to cell elongations, and its direction correlates with the anisotropy of the average cell elongation. By imposing an external time-periodic stretch, the axis of this global symmetry breaking can be modified and elongation occurs primarily due to orientated neighbor exchange. These different behaviors are confirmed using a vertex model for collective cell behavior, providing a framework for understanding autonomous tissue elongation and its origins.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Guillaume Salbreux
Funding
Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India (BT/06/IYBA/2012)
- Mandar M Inamdar
Cancer Research UK (FC001317)
- Guillaume Salbreux
Medical Research Council (FC001317)
- Guillaume Salbreux
Wellcome Trust (FC001317)
- Guillaume Salbreux
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (ANR-10-LABX-0030-INRT)
- Guillaume Salbreux
- Daniel Riveline
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-IDEX-0002-02)
- Daniel Riveline
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Comelles 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.
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Epithelial colonies in vitro elongate through collective effects
eLife 10:e57730.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.57730
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