Apr 08, 2019
A new force awakens
Schematic visualization of the anchoring of the living tissue to the protective shell during early development of the embryo.
Lewis Wolpert, a British developmental biologist, once said that it is not birth, marriage or death but gastrulation that is the most important event in life. Gastrulation describes the process during which the single-layered blastula (a hollow sphere of cells) is reorganized into a multilayered structure known as the gastrula. In the process, physical forces reshape the embryonic tissue to form complex body plans of multicellular organisms. In many embryos, the gastrulating tissue is surrounded by a rigid protective shell. So far, scientists did not know whether interactions between the living tissue and the protective shell provide additional forces that affect gastrulation. Studying the red flour beetle, researchers at the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden (BIOTEC), the Max Planck Institute of Molecular cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) and the Cluster of Excellence “Physics of Life” (PoL) recently discovered that the living tissue attaches firmly to the shell that surrounds the embryo. This attachment generates additional external forces that are required for proper gastrulation movements. The study is published in the journal Nature.