Mechanical forces are known to play important roles during morphogenesis. However, our understanding of the spatial and temporal distribution of such forces in living tissues is incomplete, in part due to our limited ability to measure stress in vivo. Here, Alexandre Souchaud, François Graner, François Gallet and colleagues develop a pipeline of techniques to directly image and measure shear stress within developing tissues. Specifically, they use a microfluidics device to generate fluorescent droplets of an elastomer called polydimethylsiloxane. These droplets, which are cell-sized and exhibit a rigidity similar to that of tissues in vivo, can be embedded into tissues and used as stress sensors. The authors first use these droplets to infer and map the distribution of stress in aggregates of CT26 tumour cells, revealing that stress amplitude increases from the centre of the aggregate to its edge. They further use the droplets to measure the distribution, amplitude and orientation of stress in the prechordal plate (PPl) of zebrafish embryos at different stages of epiboly. Here, the shear stress amplitude appears higher in the centre of the PPl than at its front, supporting the hypothesis that stress gradients exist in the PPl. Overall, this new approach provides the means to quantitatively map local stresses in living tissues both in 3D and in real time.
Making sense of stress during morphogenesis
- Split-screen
- Views Icon Views
-
Article Versions Icon
Versions
- Version of Record 22 February 2022
- Share Icon Share
-
Tools Icon
Tools
- Search Site
Making sense of stress during morphogenesis. Development 15 February 2022; 149 (4): e149_e0406. doi:
Download citation file:
Advertisement
Cited by
Call for papers: Uncovering Developmental Diversity
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. This issue will be coordinated by our academic Editor Cassandra Extavour (Harvard University, USA) alongside two Guest Editors: Liam Dolan (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria) and Karen Sears (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
Choose Development in 2024
In this Editorial, Development Editor-in-Chief James Briscoe and Executive Editor Katherine Brown explain how you support your community by publishing in Development and how the journal champions serious science, community connections and progressive publishing.
Journal Meeting: From Stem Cells to Human Development
Register now for the 2024 Development Journal Meeting From Stem Cells to Human Development. Early-bird registration deadline: 3 May. Abstract submission deadline: 21 June.
Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology
This collaborative Perspective, the result of a workshop held in 2023, proposes a set of community actions to increase the visibility of the developmental biology field. The authors make recommendations for new funding streams, frameworks for collaborations and mechanisms by which members of the community can promote themselves and their research.
Read & Publish Open Access publishing: what authors say
We have had great feedback from authors who have benefitted from our Read & Publish agreement with their institution and have been able to publish Open Access with us without paying an APC. Read what they had to say.