Epithelial invagination by a vertical telescoping cell movement in mammalian salivary glands and teeth

Jingjing Li, Andrew D. Economou, Barbara Vacca and Jeremy B. A. Green ()
Additional contact information
Jingjing Li: Centre for Craniofacial Biology and Regeneration, King’s College London
Andrew D. Economou: Centre for Craniofacial Biology and Regeneration, King’s College London
Barbara Vacca: Centre for Craniofacial Biology and Regeneration, King’s College London
Jeremy B. A. Green: Centre for Craniofacial Biology and Regeneration, King’s College London

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Epithelial bending is a fundamental process that shapes organs during development. Previously known mechanisms involve cells locally changing shape from columnar to wedge-shaped. Here we report a different mechanism that occurs without cell wedging. In mammalian salivary glands and teeth, we show that initial invagination occurs through coordinated vertical cell movement: cells towards the periphery of the placode move vertically upwards while their more central neighbours move downwards. Movement is achieved by active cell-on-cell migration: outer cells migrate with apical, centripetally polarised leading edge protrusions but remain attached to the basal lamina, depressing more central neighbours to “telescope” the epithelium downwards into underlying mesenchyme. Inhibiting protrusion formation by Arp2/3 protein blocks invagination. FGF and Hedgehog morphogen signals are required, with FGF providing a directional cue. These findings show that epithelial bending can be achieved by a morphogenetic mechanism of coordinated cell rearrangement quite distinct from previously recognised invagination processes.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16247-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16247-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16247-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().