Spontaneous elongation of 3D gastruloids from local cell polarity alignment
Richard D. J. G. Ho, Endre J. L. Mossige, Sergei Ponomartcev, Natalia Smirnova, Xian Hu, Keqing Sunny Dai, Stefan Krauss, Dag Kristian Dysthe, Luiza Angheluta
公開日: 2025/9/10
Abstract
Gastruloids are 3D stem cell aggregate models for early embryogenesis that provide a unique platform to study how collective cell dynamics drive tissue symmetry breaking and axial elongation. Using 3D light sheet imaging, we show that a pulse of Chiron, a Wnt activator, induces coherent alignment of cell polarity during elongation. While nuclear elongation occurs with or without treatment, only Chiron-treated gastruloids exhibit quasi-long-range alignment of nuclear axes, linking cell polarity coherence to tissue-scale remodeling. A minimal physical model of polarized cells, incorporating alignment-dependent torques and polarity-mediated adhesion, reproduces symmetry breaking and elongation, demonstrating that local cell polarity alignment alone can drive tissue-scale convergence-extension flows.