Coordination of mechanical and biochemical cues during morphogenesis

Determine whether and how physical forces in morphogenesis—specifically active cytoskeletal tensions, compressive stresses, and hydrostatic pressure—are coordinated with each other and with biochemical signaling events such as morphogen gradients and cell fate specification during tissue morphogenesis.

Background

The paper reviews the growing understanding that multiple types of physical forces (e.g., actomyosin-driven tensions, compressive stresses, and hydrostatic pressure) play essential roles in shaping tissues. It emphasizes that, despite this progress, the integration of these mechanical factors with each other and with classical biochemical signaling pathways (such as morphogen gradients and fate specification) remains insufficiently resolved.

The authors develop and test a mechanochemical model within intestinal organoids to demonstrate how lumen pressure and mechanosensitive feedbacks can coordinate shape changes. However, the broader question of how mechanical and biochemical cues are jointly orchestrated across morphogenesis in general remains explicitly flagged as unresolved.

References

Interestingly, even though physical forces have been established to play key functional roles during morphogenesis, it is still not clear whether and how they are coordinated with each other and with concomitant biochemical signalling events such as morphogen gradients and cell fate specification (Hannezo and Heisenberg, 2019; Zinner et al., 2020; Pinheiro et al., 2022; Valet et al., 2022).

— Mechanochemical bistability of intestinal organoids enables robust morphogenesis  (2403.19900 - Xue et al., 2024) in Introduction