Tension hones body segmentation around the clock

Ebisuya, Miki; Trepat, Xavier

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-00840-x

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27 April 2022

Tension hones body segmentation around the clock

The formation of body segments in vertebrate embryos has long been attributed to the spatio-temporal patterning of molecular signals. But segment length in zebrafish is now found to be adjusted by tissue mechanics.

Miki Ebisuya ⁰ &
Xavier Trepat ¹

Miki Ebisuya
1. Miki Ebisuya is at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Barcelona, 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
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Xavier Trepat
1. Xavier Trepat is at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology and the Biomedical Research Networking Center in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
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Not all clocks are precise. The segmentation clock is a molecular oscillator that regulates the timing of the formation of somites — multicellular blocks that give rise to bilateral structures such as ribs and skeletal muscle. During vertebrate development, somites periodically bud off on both sides of an embryonic structure called the neural tube¹, with one pair of somites being formed during each cycle of the segmentation clock. The somites’ initial volume is determined by both the frequency of the clock’s oscillation and the speed of cell movement². But, writing in Nature, Naganathan and colleagues³ reveal that the initial length of somites is surprisingly imprecise. The authors uncover a mechanism by which length is adjusted during somite formation in zebrafish. Rather than being based on the segmentation clock, this mechanism hinges on a single mechanical property of the somite — its surface tension.

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Nature 605, 432-433 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00840-x

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