Tissue Organization: When cells get in the flow

New imaging approaches question a long-standing model for how the eyes of fruit flies acquire their geometric patterning.
  1. Giovanna M Collu
  2. Marek Mlodzik  Is a corresponding author
  1. Department of Cell, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States

Take a close look at the skin of a bird or a mammal, and you will observe an impressively regular pattern of hair follicles or feathers interspersed with epidermal skin cells (Ho et al., 2019; Sick et al., 2006; Stark et al., 2007). A strikingly similar organization exists in the eyes of the developing fruit fly Drosophila, with clusters of photoreceptor neurons regularly distributed amongst epithelial support cells. Each cluster will go on to form one facet in the compound adult eye (Heberlein and Treisman, 2000).

Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain how such intricate spacing patterns emerge. The ‘reaction-diffusion model’ suggested by Alan Turing, for example, postulates that cells developing as a feather bud secrete an inhibitor around themselves to stop equivalent structures from forming too closely (Turing, 1997; Figure 1A). Now, in eLife, Kevin Gallagher, Madhav Mani and Richard Carthew – who are all based at Northwestern University – report on new observations that challenge this view, proposing an alternative mechanism that relies on complex cell movements during development (Gallagher et al., 2022).

A new model for how the fly eye acquires its patterning during development.

(A) In birds and mammals, the epidermis features a geometric patterning, with feathers or hair follicles having regular spacing between them. According to the reaction-diffusion model, this organisation emerges because of short-range activators (yellow) and long-range inhibitors (blue) limiting the sites at which feathers or hair follicles form. (B) During the larval stage, the cells that will form structures in the adult fly develop in sacs of cells called imaginal discs, which can be identified by their shape and position in the larva. Colour-coding shows the correspondence between individual discs and adult structures (e.g. the red imaginal discs in the larvae will mature into eyes – also in red). Disc dissection, culture, and direct imaging allow visualization of developmental patterning processes, as shown by Gallagher and colleagues for the eye disc. (C) Gallagher et al. propose an updated model to explain the geometric patterning of the eye disc. An activator (atonal, yellow), and Scabrous (a possible secreted inhibitor, blue) are expressed by early photoreceptor clusters. The yellow stripe on the left represents the morphogenetic furrow moving from the posterior (right) to the anterior side of the disc (left). Cells to the left of the furrow constrict and those to the right expand, driving cell flow in the pattern shown by the black arrows. This cellular movement ensures regularly spaced photoreceptor clusters.

During the fruit fly’s larval stages, the cells that will form adult structures develop in isolated sacs called imaginal discs. During metamorphosis, the larval tissue is degraded and the discs expand and fuse to create adult structures (Figure 1B). This process is difficult to visualize as it happens inside the developing insect. Traditional approaches involve dissecting and fixing the tissue, which can only provide ‘snapshots’ at specific time points. As a response, Gallagher et al. set up a new system that allowed them to image cellular behavior ‘live’ in developing larvae, achieving high spatial and temporal resolution. To do this, they isolated discs from genetically modified flies that express fluorescent cell adhesion proteins, and cultured these structures ex vivo; this allowed the team to track cell outlines in developing larvae, and to follow their movement over time.

Gallagher et al. applied their technique to the eye disc, whose development is controlled by a wave of signals – the morphogenetic furrow – spreading over the disc from one end to the other. The cells constrict as the furrow passes over them, but it was assumed that they remained stationary through this process. Specific cell fates, and therefore the final patterning of the eye, were thought to emerge from the signaling molecules and events associated with the furrow (Heberlein and Treisman, 2000).

Yet, the results from Gallagher et al. contradict that long-standing assumption, showing instead that cells in the eye disc are very dynamic. As individual cells rearrange themselves with respect to their neighbors, they move away from any potential diffusing signal they may have been exposed to initially; this means that the Turing’s reaction-diffusion model cannot sufficiently explain how the final geometric pattern emerges in the eye. Instead, these individual motions create an overall, strikingly cohesive ‘flow’, which pushes cells towards the morphogenetic furrow.

Gallagher et al. then analyzed the cell flow mathematically and calculated how quickly cells moved depending on their position relative to the furrow. This revealed that cells undergo periodic phases of fast and slow movement, with these oscillations correlating with the precise spacing of photoreceptor clusters. Cells in defined areas behind and in front of the furrow respectively dilate or constrict, generating forces that create the periodic cell flow: the dilation pushes the cells to move away while the constriction serves as a ‘sink’ that draws the cells towards it. This means that cells flow into the spaces between photoreceptor clusters, ensuring that these are regularly spaced out (Figure 1C).

Next, Gallagher et al. examined the role of Scabrous, a protein secreted during development that affects the geometric spacing of photoreceptor clusters in unknown ways (Baker et al., 1990; Mlodzik et al., 1990). In mutant tissue lacking Scabrous, cell dilation decreases; cell flow becomes disrupted, leading to irregular spacing and tissue organization. How Scabrous regulates the dilation and flow of cells remains unclear, but the observation confirms how important organized cell flow is for tissue patterning to emerge.

As cell flow becomes one of the mechanisms known to regulate precise tissue organization, many exciting questions emerge: how is this process controlled genetically? Do signaling molecules from the morphogenetic furrow regulate cell dilation and constriction, as well as cell identity and inhibitor production? Or does cell flow regulate gene expression directly within the furrow? The new imaging approach by Gallagher et al. will help to address these questions, allowing researchers to track how signaling and cell flow cooperate to organize the eye tissue pattern.

A few recent studies focusing on the later stages of eye development in Drosophila, as well as other tissues, also highlight that cells need to move together and relative to each other (known as tissue fluidity) for an organism to develop (Founounou et al., 2021; Aigouy et al., 2010; Mongera et al., 2018). These findings are ushering in a new phase of research in organogenesis and developmental biology, allowing alternative models to emerge based on tissue fluidity, cell flow, and tissue organization.

References

  1. Book
    1. Heberlein U
    2. Treisman JE
    (2000) Early Retinal Development in Drosophila
    In: Elizabeth Fini M, editors. Vertebrate Eye Development. Springer. pp. 37–50.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-46826-4
    1. Turing MA
    (1997) The chemical basis of morphogenesis
    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 237:37–72.
    https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1952.0012

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Giovanna M Collu

    Giovanna M Collu is the Department of Cell, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States

    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7437-4000
  2. Marek Mlodzik

    Marek Mlodzik is the Department of Cell, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States

    For correspondence
    marek.mlodzik@mssm.edu
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0628-3465

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding from the NIH/NIGMS (R35 GM127103).

Publication history

  1. Version of Record published:

Copyright

© 2022, Collu and Mlodzik

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

Metrics

  • 1,039
    views
  • 62
    downloads
  • 0
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Giovanna M Collu
  2. Marek Mlodzik
(2022)
Tissue Organization: When cells get in the flow
eLife 11:e77309.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.77309

Further reading

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Evolutionary Biology
    Hope M Healey, Hayden B Penn ... William A Cresko
    Research Article

    Seahorses, pipefishes, and seadragons are fishes from the family Syngnathidae that have evolved extraordinary traits including male pregnancy, elongated snouts, loss of teeth, and dermal bony armor. The developmental genetic and cellular changes that led to the evolution of these traits are largely unknown. Recent syngnathid genome assemblies revealed suggestive gene content differences and provided the opportunity for detailed genetic analyses. We created a single-cell RNA sequencing atlas of Gulf pipefish embryos to understand the developmental basis of four traits: derived head shape, toothlessness, dermal armor, and male pregnancy. We completed marker gene analyses, built genetic networks, and examined the spatial expression of select genes. We identified osteochondrogenic mesenchymal cells in the elongating face that express regulatory genes bmp4, sfrp1a, and prdm16. We found no evidence for tooth primordia cells, and we observed re-deployment of osteoblast genetic networks in developing dermal armor. Finally, we found that epidermal cells expressed nutrient processing and environmental sensing genes, potentially relevant for the brooding environment. The examined pipefish evolutionary innovations are composed of recognizable cell types, suggesting that derived features originate from changes within existing gene networks. Future work addressing syngnathid gene networks across multiple stages and species is essential for understanding how the novelties of these fish evolved.

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Taro Ichimura, Taishi Kakizuka ... Takeharu Nagai
    Tools and Resources

    We established a volumetric trans-scale imaging system with an ultra-large field-of-view (FOV) that enables simultaneous observation of millions of cellular dynamics in centimeter-wide three-dimensional (3D) tissues and embryos. Using a custom-made giant lens system with a magnification of ×2 and a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.25, and a CMOS camera with more than 100 megapixels, we built a trans-scale scope AMATERAS-2, and realized fluorescence imaging with a transverse spatial resolution of approximately 1.1 µm across an FOV of approximately 1.5×1.0 cm2. The 3D resolving capability was realized through a combination of optical and computational sectioning techniques tailored for our low-power imaging system. We applied the imaging technique to 1.2 cm-wide section of mouse brain, and successfully observed various regions of the brain with sub-cellular resolution in a single FOV. We also performed time-lapse imaging of a 1-cm-wide vascular network during quail embryo development for over 24 hr, visualizing the movement of over 4.0×105 vascular endothelial cells and quantitatively analyzing their dynamics. Our results demonstrate the potential of this technique in accelerating production of comprehensive reference maps of all cells in organisms and tissues, which contributes to understanding developmental processes, brain functions, and pathogenesis of disease, as well as high-throughput quality check of tissues used for transplantation medicine.