https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-022-00201-6
Regular Article - Living Systems
Interplay between cell height variations and planar pulsations in epithelial monolayers
1
Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Illkirch, France
2
Laboratory of Cell Physics ISIS/IGBMC, CNRS, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
3
UMR7104, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Illkirch, France
4
U964, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Illkirch, France
5
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, 400076, Mumbai, India
b
minamdar@iitb.ac.in
c
riveline@unistra.fr
Received:
7
February
2022
Accepted:
21
April
2022
Published online:
19
May
2022
Biological tissues change their shapes through collective interactions of cells. This coordination sets length and time scales for dynamics where precision is essential, in particular during morphogenetic events. However, how these scales emerge remains unclear. Here, we address this question using the pulsatile domains observed in confluent epithelial MDCK monolayers where cells exhibit synchronous contraction and extension cycles of 
h duration and 
length scale. We report that the monolayer thickness changes gradually in space and time by more than twofold in order to counterbalance the contraction and extension of the incompressible cytoplasm. We recapitulate these pulsatile dynamics using a continuum model and show that incorporation of cell stiffness dependent height variations is critical both for generating temporal pulsations and establishing the domain size. We propose that this feedback between height and mechanics could be important in coordinating the length scales of tissue dynamics.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-022-00201-6.
Copyright comment corrected publication 2022
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