Publication Date:
2011-10-25
Description:
In the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote, a conserved network of partitioning-defective (PAR) polarity proteins segregates into an anterior and a posterior domain, facilitated by flows of the cortical actomyosin meshwork. The physical mechanisms by which stable asymmetric PAR distributions arise from transient cortical flows remain unclear. We present evidence that PAR polarity arises from coupling of advective transport by the flowing cell cortex to a multistable PAR reaction-diffusion system. By inducing transient PAR segregation, advection serves as a mechanical trigger for the formation of a PAR pattern within an otherwise stably unpolarized system. We suggest that passive advective transport in an active and flowing material may be a general mechanism for mechanochemical pattern formation in developmental systems.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Goehring, Nathan W -- Trong, Philipp Khuc -- Bois, Justin S -- Chowdhury, Debanjan -- Nicola, Ernesto M -- Hyman, Anthony A -- Grill, Stephan W -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2011 Nov 25;334(6059):1137-41. doi: 10.1126/science.1208619. Epub 2011 Oct 20.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22021673" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Caenorhabditis elegans/*embryology/metabolism
;
Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins/genetics/*metabolism
;
*Cell Polarity
;
Cytoplasm/metabolism
;
Diffusion
;
Embryo, Nonmammalian/metabolism/*physiology
;
Embryonic Development
;
Protein Transport
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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