Apical constriction promotes epithelia folding, which changes tissue architecture. During Drosophila gastrulation, mesoderm cells exhibit repeated contractile pulses that are stabilized such that cells apically constrict like a ratchet. The transcription factor Twist is required to stabilize cell shape, however it is unknown how Twist spatially coordinates downstream signals to prevent cell relaxation. We find that during constriction, Rho-associated kinase (Rok) is polarized to the middle of the apical domain (medioapical cortex), separate from adherens junctions (AJs). Rok recruits or stabilizes medioapical myosin II (Myo-II), which contracts dynamic medioapical actin cables. The formin Diaphanous mediates apical actin assembly to suppress medioapical E-Cadherin localization and form stable connections between the medioapical contractile network and AJs. Twist is not required for apical Rok recruitment, but instead polarizes Rok medioapically. Therefore, Twist establishes “radial” cell polarity of Rok/Myo-II and E-Cadherin and promotes medioapical actin assembly in mesoderm cells to stabilize cell shape fluctuations.

Dynamic regulation of Myo-II by Rho kinase and myosin phosphatase organizes contractile Myo-II pulses in both space and time, which is necessary to maintain tissue integrity during morphogenesis.

Mason et al. show that RhoA activity is regulated in space and time by a GEF/GAP module that tunes cell behavior and is required for proper tissue folding and shape during Drosophila morphogenesis.

Summary The propagation of force in epithelial tissues requires that the contractile cytoskeletal machinery be stably connected between cells through E-cadherin-containing adherens junctions. In many epithelial tissues the cells’ contractile network is positioned at a distance from the junction. However, the mechanism(s) that connect the contractile networks to the adherens junctions, and thus mechanically connect neighboring cells, is poorly understood. Here, we identified the role for F-actin turnover in regulating the contractile cytosketal network’s attachment to adherens junctions. Perturbing F-actin turnover via gene depletion or acute drug treatments that slow F-actin turnover destabilized the attachment between the contractile actomyosin network and adherens junctions. Our work identifies a critical role for F-actin turnover in connecting actomyosin to intercellular junctions, defining a dynamic process required for the stability of force balance across intercellular contacts in tissues.

Recent studies in vertebrates and Drosophila melanogaster have revealed that Fringe-mediated activation of the Notch pathway has a role in patterning cell layers during organogenesis. In these processes, a homeobox-containing transcription factor is responsible for spatially regulating fringe (fng) expression and thus directing activation of the Notch pathway along the fng expression border. Here we show that this may be a general mechanism for patterning epithelial cell layers. At three stages in Drosophila oogenesis, mirror (mirr) and fng have complementary expression patterns in the follicle-cell epithelial layer, and at all three stages loss of mirr enlarges, and ectopic expression of mirr restricts, fng expression, with consequences for follicle-cell patterning. These morphological changes are similar to those caused by Notch mutations. Ectopic expression of mirr in the posterior follicle cells induces a stripe of rhomboid (rho) expression and represses pipe (pip), a gene with a role in the establishment of the dorsal-ventral axis, at a distance. Ectopic Notch activation has a similar long-range effect on pip. Our results suggest that Mirror and Notch induce secretion of diffusible morphogens and we have identified TGF-beta (encoded by dpp) as such a molecule in germarium. We also found that mirr expression in dorsal follicle cells is induced by the EGF-receptor (EGFR) pathway and that mirr then represses pip expression in all but the ventral follicle cells, connecting EGFR activation in the dorsal follicle cells to repression of pip in the dorsal and lateral follicle cells. Our results suggest that the differentiation of ventral follicle cells is not a direct consequence of germline signalling, but depends on long-range signals from dorsal follicle cells, and provide a link between early and late events in Drosophila embryonic dorsal-ventral axis formation.