On Growth and Form Centenary

The centennial celebrations for morphology masterwork On Growth and Form are just kicking off. We look at why physicists should get involved.

A 3D-printed fetal brain undergoes constrained expansion to reproduce the shape of the human cerebral cortex. The soft gels of the model swell in solvent, mimicking cortical growth and revealing the mechanical origin of the brain’s folded geometry.

Variation around colour pattern genes is highly modular in Heliconius butterflies. This modular architecture explains the diversity of colour patterns and provides a flexible mechanism for rapid morphological diversification.

Domesticated animals are great models to understand how diversity is generated. Here, the authors show that patterns of cranial shape variation in domestic pigeons mirror cranial variation in birds in general, suggesting that selection on conserved developmental mechanisms can generate tremendous diversity.

Orhon et al. report that primary-cilium-mediated fluid flow sensing triggers autophagy through LKB1–AMPK–mTOR signalling, and thereby controls the volume of kidney epithelial cells.

Using live imaging of zebrafish angiogenesis, Gerhardt and colleagues observe blood-flow-regulated inverse membrane blebbing during lumen expansion, and show that actomyosin contractility is needed for both bleb retraction and lumen formation.

Interphase microtubule organization creates a structural scaffold for cargo delivery determining cell polarity and cell shape. Here the authors show that in Drosophilaepithelia the orientation of microtubules responds to cell shape, rather than the converse, and develop a simple model to mimic this behaviour.

EpCAM is an unconventional epithelia-specific cell–cell adhesion molecule, that is mutated in the majority of cases of Congenital Tufting Enteropathy. Here the authors show that loss of EpCAM causes a concentration of contractile activity at tricellular junctions, leading to aberrant apical domain and tight junction displacement.