Morphogen gradients are regulated by porous media characteristics of the developing tissue
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Long-range morphogen gradients have been proposed to form by morphogen diffusion from a localized source to distributed sinks in the target tissue. The role of the complex tissue geometry in this process is, however, less well understood and has not been explicitly resolved in existing models. Here, we numerically reconstruct pore-scale 3D geometries of zebrafish epiboly from light-sheet microscopy volumes. In these high-resolution 3D geometries, we simulate Fgf8a gradient formation in the tortuous extracellular space. Our simulations show that when realistic embryo geometries are considered, a source-diffusion-degradation mechanism with additional binding to extracellular matrix polymers is sufficient to explain emergence and robust maintenance of Fgf8a gradients. The predicted normalized gradient is robust against changes in source and sink rates but sensitive to changes in the pore connectivity of the extracellular space, with lower connectivity leading to steeper and shorter gradients. This demonstrates the importance of considering realistic geometries when studying morphogen gradients.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | dev204312 |
| Journal | Development (Cambridge, England) |
| Volume | 152 |
| Issue number | 13 |
| Early online date | 2 Jun 2025 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
| ORCID | /0000-0003-4414-4340/work/186183018 |
|---|---|
| unpaywall | 10.1242/dev.204312 |
| Scopus | 105010590157 |
Keywords
Keywords
- Animals, Computer Simulation, Diffusion, Embryo, Nonmammalian/metabolism, Extracellular Matrix/metabolism, Fibroblast Growth Factors/metabolism, Models, Biological, Morphogenesis, Porosity, Zebrafish Proteins/metabolism, Zebrafish/embryology