Long-lived force patterns and deformation waves at repulsive epithelial boundaries.

ABSTRACT: For an organism to develop and maintain homeostasis, cell types with distinct functions must often be separated by physical boundaries. The formation and maintenance of such boundaries are commonly attributed to mechanisms restricted to the cells lining the boundary. Here we show that, besides these local subcellular mechanisms, the formation and maintenance of tissue boundaries involves long-lived, long-ranged mechanical events. Following contact between two epithelial monolayers expressing, respectively, EphB2 and its ligand ephrinB1, both monolayers exhibit oscillatory patterns of traction forces and intercellular stresses that tend to pull cell-matrix adhesions away from the boundary. With time, monolayers jam, accompanied by the emergence of deformation waves that propagate away from

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez-Franco P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5657559 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature