Using targeted manipulation of cell adhesion to study tissue properties during morphogenesis

Date

May 21, 2026

Time

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Speaker

Gerald Lerchbaumer

Affiliation

University of Toronto, Canada

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Host

Rita Mateus

Description

Cell adhesion is essential for shaping tissues during animal development, yet how adhesion is tuned to support different morphogenetic movements remains unclear. We used optogenetics in the Drosophila embryo to address this question by enhancing clustering of E-cadherin, a core component of adherens junctions. Increasing E-cadherin clustering enriches E-cadherin at junctions and reduces its mobility, consistent with enhanced adhesion strength. This approach allows targeted manipulation of cellular adhesive properties in vivo and makes it possible to address questions that were previously difficult to test directly. By analyzing animal development while increasing cell adhesion throughout the epithelial tissue, we found that this causes a strong reduction in cell rearrangements during epithelial morphogenesis and disrupts convergent extension of the embryonic axis. To further understand these effects, we adapted a vertex model to include adhesion-dependent friction between cells. The model predicts that stronger adhesion increases resistance to neighbor exchange and thereby limits tissue remodeling. To test this idea, we analyzed different morphogenetic movements in the fly and their dependence on cell adhesion. We found that enhanced E-cadherin clustering strongly slows morphogenetic processes that depend on both cell shape change and cell rearrangement, while movements that rely primarily on apical constriction can still proceed. Together, these findings suggest that E-cadherin clustering is an important regulator of tissue mechanics and that tuning adhesion is critical for morphogenetic events that require dynamic cell-cell rearrangements

Last modified: Apr 24, 2026, 7:36:29 AM