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Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain

Somitogenesis, the primary segmentation of the vertebrate embryo, is associated with oscillating genes that interact with a wave of cell differentiation. The necessity of cell-matrix adherence and embryonic tension, however, suggests that mechanical cues are also involved. To explicitly investigate...

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Autores principales: Nelemans, Ben K.A., Schmitz, Manuel, Tahir, Hannan, Merks, Roeland M.H., Smit, Theodoor H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7109633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32222696
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2020.100976
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author Nelemans, Ben K.A.
Schmitz, Manuel
Tahir, Hannan
Merks, Roeland M.H.
Smit, Theodoor H.
author_facet Nelemans, Ben K.A.
Schmitz, Manuel
Tahir, Hannan
Merks, Roeland M.H.
Smit, Theodoor H.
author_sort Nelemans, Ben K.A.
collection PubMed
description Somitogenesis, the primary segmentation of the vertebrate embryo, is associated with oscillating genes that interact with a wave of cell differentiation. The necessity of cell-matrix adherence and embryonic tension, however, suggests that mechanical cues are also involved. To explicitly investigate this, we applied surplus axial strain to live chick embryos. Despite substantial deformations, the embryos developed normally and somite formation rate was unaffected. Surprisingly, however, we observed slow cellular reorganizations of the most elongated somites into two or more well-shaped daughter somites. In what appeared to be a regular process of boundary formation, somites divided and fibronectin was deposited in between. Cell counts and morphology indicated that cells from the somitocoel underwent mesenchymal-epithelial transition; this was supported by a Cellular Potts model of somite division. Thus, although somitogenesis appeared to be extremely robust, we observed new boundary formation in existing somites and conclude that mechanical strain can be morphologically instructive.
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spelling pubmed-71096332020-04-03 Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain Nelemans, Ben K.A. Schmitz, Manuel Tahir, Hannan Merks, Roeland M.H. Smit, Theodoor H. iScience Article Somitogenesis, the primary segmentation of the vertebrate embryo, is associated with oscillating genes that interact with a wave of cell differentiation. The necessity of cell-matrix adherence and embryonic tension, however, suggests that mechanical cues are also involved. To explicitly investigate this, we applied surplus axial strain to live chick embryos. Despite substantial deformations, the embryos developed normally and somite formation rate was unaffected. Surprisingly, however, we observed slow cellular reorganizations of the most elongated somites into two or more well-shaped daughter somites. In what appeared to be a regular process of boundary formation, somites divided and fibronectin was deposited in between. Cell counts and morphology indicated that cells from the somitocoel underwent mesenchymal-epithelial transition; this was supported by a Cellular Potts model of somite division. Thus, although somitogenesis appeared to be extremely robust, we observed new boundary formation in existing somites and conclude that mechanical strain can be morphologically instructive. Elsevier 2020-03-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7109633/ /pubmed/32222696 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2020.100976 Text en © 2020 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Nelemans, Ben K.A.
Schmitz, Manuel
Tahir, Hannan
Merks, Roeland M.H.
Smit, Theodoor H.
Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain
title Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain
title_full Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain
title_fullStr Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain
title_full_unstemmed Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain
title_short Somite Division and New Boundary Formation by Mechanical Strain
title_sort somite division and new boundary formation by mechanical strain
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7109633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32222696
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2020.100976
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