Folding Under Pressure

When an embryo starts to form organs, groups of cells gather and fold into shape. This process is steered by a vast array of factors, from chemical signals to physical pressures, many of which we don’t fully understand. To bend into detailed forms, neighbouring cells must apply, and be subject to, forces in varied directions. Two types of asymmetry, or polarity, guide these interactions. To investigate just how significant these polarities are in relation to other factors, researchers developed computer simulations of cellular development when driven by this alone. Virtual cells with different characteristics produced different shapes, such as the organs pictured growing from 200 to 16,000 cells when cells rapidly divide under no pressure (left) or with external pressure applied (right). Peculiarities in cell polarity can lead to cancer, and this mathematical evidence that polarity alone can produce complex shapes may help decipher how and why that happens.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video from work by Silas Boye Nissen and colleagues
• Center for Models of Life, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Video originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, November 2018