Physical aspects of Drosophila Gastrulation

生物体、它们的器官和组织的正常功能要求它们具有特定的 形状。如何指定和保持这种形状是生物学中的一个基本问题。在……里面 动物的形状是通过形态发生的过程来决定的，是一个协调的序列 导致最终身体计划的组织重塑事件。尽管长期以来一直在努力 了解形态发生的物理机制，这些机制仍然 在很大程度上仍然不为人知。 在过去，大量参与调控形态发生的分子参与者 已经被非常详细地识别和描述。相比之下，物理机制通过 这些不同的分子参与者共同决定了组织动力学仍然很差 明白了。从物理学的基本考虑来看，为了完全确定 一个形态发生变化的机制，绝对需要两条信息：(1) 关于驱动组织变形的主动作用力的知识，以及(2)关于材料的知识 组织的属性。以果蝇原肠发育为模型，结合 生物物理、分子和建模方法，我们提出了一种足以确定 两者都有。通过这种方式，我们预计第一次能够完全描述 物理原理是研究最多的形态发生事件之一的基础。这两个 这里开发的技术和一般方法应该适用于各种各样的 组织形态发生过程。

The proper function of organisms, their organs, and their tissues requires them to have specific shape. How this shape is specified and maintained is a fundamental question in biology. In animals, the shape is determined through the process of morphogenesis, a concerted sequence of tissue remodeling events leading up to the final body plan. Despite a long-standing effort to understand the physical mechanisms that underlie morphogenesis, these mechanisms still remain largely unknown. In the past, a large number of molecular players involved in regulating morphogenesis have been identified and characterized in great detail. In contrast, physical mechanisms through which the various molecular players collectively determine the tissue dynamics remain poorly understood. Basic considerations from physics imply that in order to completely determine the mechanism of a morphogenetic change, two pieces of information are absolutely required: (1) the knowledge of active forces that drive tissue deformation, and (2) the knowledge of material properties of the tissue. Using Drosophila gastrulation as a model, and by combining biophysical, molecular, and modeling methods, we propose an approach sufficient to determine both. In this way, we anticipate being able to for the first time completely characterize the physical principles that underlie one of the most studied morphogenetic events. Both the techniques and general approach developed here should be applicable to a wide variety of tissue morphogenesis processes.