Quantitative gastrulation

2010 Drosophila Image Award

We have applied quantitative methods to live imaging to understand the mechanisms behind tissue reshaping, using Drosophila embryos as a model (1,2).Live Drosophila embryo filmed during gastrulation, with the apical cell membranes labelled with Green Fluorescent protein and automatically tracked through time. On this movie frame, the multicoloured tracks represent the trajectory of the centre of each cell over the previous 4 minutes.

Butler LC, Blanchard GB, Kabla AJ, Lawrence NJ, Welchman DP, Mahadevan L, Adams RJ, Sanson B. (2009) Cell shape changes indicate a role for extrinsic tensile forces in Drosophila germ-band extension. Nature Cell Biology, 11: 859-64.
Blanchard GB, Kabla AJ, Schultz NL, Butler LC, Sanson B, Gorfinkiel N, Mahadevan L, Adams RJ. (2009) Tissue tectonics: morphogenetic strain rates, cell shape change and intercalation. Nature Methods, 6:458-64.

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• Drosophila
• gastrulation
• B
• Sanson