Dr Lin Yuan, Associate Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and his team had worked on a research for the topic “Force-mediated cellular anisotropy and plasticity dictate the elongation dynamics of embryos”. The research was published by Science Advances on June 30, 2021.
Details of the publication:
Force-mediated cellular anisotropy and plasticity dictate the elongation dynamics of embryos
Chao Fang, Xi Wei, Xueying Shao and Yuan Lin
Article in Science Advances, Vol 7, no. 27, Article number: eabg3264
Abstract:
We developed a unified dynamic model to explain how cellular anisotropy and plasticity, induced by alignment and severing/rebundling of actin filaments, dictate the elongation dynamics of Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. It was found that the gradual alignment of F-actins must be synchronized with the development of intracellular forces for the embryo to elongate, which is then further sustained by muscle contraction–triggered plastic deformation of cells. In addition, we showed that preestablished anisotropy is essential for the proper onset of the process while defects in the integrity or bundling kinetics of actin bundles result in abnormal embryo elongation, all in good agreement with experimental observations.
Link: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/27/eabg3264