Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Developmental biology

Mechanics in the embryo

Nature volume 504, pages 223–225 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

Mechanical stresses that are intrinsic to the early shape-forming movements of embryonic tissues have now been shown to play essential and evolutionarily conserved parts in cell-fate specification.

There is a time in animal development when the embryo, until then a single layer of identical cells, starts to fold on itself. This remarkable process, called gastrulation, produces three germ layers: the mesoderm, ectoderm and endoderm1. This embryonic structure was already present in Urbilateria2, the most recent common ancestor of most animals, which lived in the Precambrian seas more than 600 million years ago. Surprisingly, however, the cellular and molecular events associated with gastrulation are not evolutionarily conserved among extant animal phyla3. How can this universal morphogenetic step occur without any apparent selective pressure for specific mechanisms? Writing in Nature Communications, Brunet et al.4 suggest a solution to this conundrum — that it is the mechanics of gastrulation that is evolutionarily conserved.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Stretched embryos make mesoderm.

References

  1. Stern, C. D. Gastrulation: From Cells to Embryo (Cold Spring Harb. Lab. Press, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  2. De Robertis, E. M. Cell 132, 185–195 (2008).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Technau, U. & Scholz, C. B. Int. J. Dev. Biol. 47, 531–539 (2003).

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Brunet, T. et al. Nature Commun. http:dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3821 (2013).

  5. Wozniak, M. A. & Chen, C. S. Nature Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 10, 34–43 (2009).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Desprat, N., Supatto, W. & Pouille, P.-A. Dev. Cell 15, 470–477 (2008).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Voiculescu, O., Bertocchini, F., Wolpert, L., Keller, R. E. & Stern, C. D. Nature 449, 1049–1052 (2007).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Hiramatsu, R. et al. Dev. Cell 27, 131–144 (2013).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Halder, G., Dupont, S. & Piccolo, S. Nature Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 13, 591–600 (2012).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stefano Piccolo is in the Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Padua Medical School, 35126 Padua, Italy.,

    Stefano Piccolo

Authors
  1. Stefano Piccolo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefano Piccolo.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Piccolo, S. Mechanics in the embryo. Nature 504, 223–225 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/504223a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/504223a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing