Berlin 2024 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 33: Focus session: Physics of organoids

BP 33.1: Hauptvortrag

Donnerstag, 21. März 2024, 15:00–15:30, H 1028

Symmetry breaking in early embryonic organoids: bridging networks, mechanics and metabolism — •Vikas Trivedi — EMBL Barcelona, Spain — EMBL Heidelberg, Germany

How can tissue shapes and patterns emerge reproducibly and robustly in multicellular systems like animals? Despite more than 100 years of embryology, it still remains unclear how gene networks, forces and mechanical properties and the metabolic state of the cells integrate together to self-organize complex structures. This is due to our inability to disentangle the combined action of these factors (biophysical properties, gene networks and metabolic activity) within populations of genetically equivalent cells. We address this challenge within the context of the establishment of body axes in animals using aggregates of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) that recapitulate hallmarks of early embryonic development in vitro and probe the first symmetry breaking event that establishes anteroposterior polarity. By means of quantitative live imaging, mechanical measurements, molecular perturbations and mathematical modelling, we show how mechanochemical coupling between cells controls tissue rheology and metabolic activity controls the proportions of different cells types by acting upstream of signalling. Altogether, our results allow us to investigate how differentiation trajectories in vivo and in vitro can converge onto similar cell fates through coordinated changes in signaling, metabolic states and biophysical properties.