• Accueil >
  • Publications >
  • Cortical instability drives periodic supracellular actin pattern formation in epithelial tubes

Cortical instability drives periodic supracellular actin pattern formation in epithelial tubes

14 juil. 2015Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI : 10.1073/pnas.1504762112

Auteurs

Edouard Hannezo, Bo Dong, Pierre Recho, Jean-François Joanny, Shigeo Hayashi

Résumé

Significance

Robust pattern formation is a ubiquitous question of developmental biology. In 1952, Turing proposed in a seminal paper that this could be achieved by a hydrodynamical instability of two diffusing species reacting with each other, but direct experimental evidence of how a mechanism is implemented biologically is still lacking. In this paper, we show by a combination of experiment and theory that the actin cytoskeleton, one of the main force-producing mechanisms in biology, has the property to self-organize into regular supracellular patterns in vivo in Drosophila . We show that the wavelength of the pattern depends on the physical properties of the gel and can be modified experimentally.