now @buckleylab.bsky.social. We use live confocal imaging and optogenetics to investigate mechanics and cell polarity during epithelial organ morphogenesis
Joined March 2020
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in vivo optogenetic control of actomyosin contractility deep within the zebrafish brain
Now that we have polished it a bit, we are excited to share our new preprint with you "Local optogenetic NMYII activation within the zebrafish neural rod results in long range, asymmetric force propagation" biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Local contractile force on the mediolateral axis tangentially propagated anisotropic shear strain along the AP axis. This force propagation was long ranging, suggesting the active mechanical propagation of cell generated force.
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Local contractility temporally synchronised this oscillation, created a static standing wave along the AP axis, with wavelength correlating with rhombomeric length.
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This revealed the presence of locally propagating spatial oscillations of expansion and contraction along the anterior-posterior axis before activation.
The degree of epithelialisation did not have a significant impact on the extent of force propagation via lateral cortices, suggesting that the level of lateral cadherin-based adhesions and cellular packing remains similar over the course of mesenchymal to epithelial transition.
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Surprisingly, tissue displacement occurred asymmetrically, in either the anterior or in the posterior direction, likely due to local gradients in RhoA activation.
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We measured the effects of this local increase in tissue contractility on the wider surrounding tissue, using particle image velocimetry (PIV) analysis to extract velocity vectors. This uncovered a tangential and elastic tissue displacement along the anterior-posterior axis.
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2D light patterning in a 33x33um square created approximately hourglass shaped 3D regions of activation within the tissue, encompassing ~140 cells. This local actomyosin contractility resulted in shortening of cells along their long, mediolateral axis
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