Dynamics of Mouth Opening in Hydra.

ABSTRACT: Hydra, a simple freshwater animal famous for its regenerative capabilities, must tear a hole through its epithelial tissue each time it opens its mouth. The feeding response of Hydra has been well-characterized physiologically and is regarded as a classical model system for environmental chemical biology. However, due to a lack of in vivo labeling and imaging tools, the biomechanics of mouth opening have remained completely unexplored. We take advantage of the availability of transgenic Hydra lines to perform the first dynamical analysis, to our knowledge, of Hydra mouth opening and test existing hypotheses regarding the underlying cellular mechanisms. Through cell position and shape tracking, we show that mouth opening is accompanied by changes in cell shape, but not cellular rearrangemen

SUBMITTER: Carter JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4788721 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature