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Morphogenesis on the Multicellular Level: Patterns of Mechanical Stresses and Main Modes of Collective Cell Behavior

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Morphomechanics of Development

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Abstract

Regular patterns of mechanical stresses are perfectly expressed on the macromorphological level in the embryos of all taxonomic groups studied in this respect. Stress patterns are characterized by the topological invariability retained during prolonged time periods and drastically changing in between. After explanting small pieces of embryonic tissues, they are restored within several dozens minutes. Disturbance of stress patterns in developing embryos irreversibly breaks the long-range order of subsequent development. Morphogenetically important stress patterns are established by three geometrically different modes of cell alignment: parallel, perpendicular, and oblique. The first of them creates prolonged files of actively elongated cells. The second is responsible for segregation of an epithelial layer to the domains of columnar and flattened cells. The model of this process, demonstrating its scaling capacities, is described. The third mode which follows the previous one is responsible for making the curvatures. It is associated with formation of “cell fans,” the universal devices for shapes formation due to slow relaxation of the stored elastic energy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The eccentricity, denoted e or \( \varepsilon \), is a measure of how much any conic section deviates from being circular. For our purposes, it is enough to know that the eccentricity of a circle is zero and the eccentricity of an ellipse which is not a circle is greater than zero but less than 1.

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  1. Department of Embryology, Moscow State University, 11991, Moscow, Russia

    Lev V. Beloussov

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  1. Lev V. Beloussov
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Correspondence to Lev V. Beloussov .

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Beloussov, L.V. (2015). Morphogenesis on the Multicellular Level: Patterns of Mechanical Stresses and Main Modes of Collective Cell Behavior. In: Morphomechanics of Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13990-6_3

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