Multiparameters dependance of tissue shape maintenance in myoblasts multicellular aggregates: the role of intermediate filaments

Abstract

Liquid and elastic behavior of tissues drives their morphology and their response to the environment. They appear as the first insight on tissue mechanics. We explore the role of individual cell properties on spheroids of mouse muscle precursor cells by developing a fully automated surface tension and Young's modulus measurement system. Flattening multicellular aggregates under magnetic constraint, we show that rigidity and surface tension act as highly sensitive macroscopic reporters closely related to microscopic local tension and effective adhesion. Shedding light on the major contributions of acto-myosin contractility, actin organization and intercellular adhesions, we reveal the role of desmin organization on the macroscopic mechanics of this tissue model.

Surface tension of model tissues during malignant transformation and epithelial–mesenchymal transition

“…The equilibrium shape of the multicellular aggregate is reached after 10 min. The surface tension γ is deduced from the flattened profile of the aggregate by using the TensioX dedicated MatLab application ( Nagle et al, 2021 ). In brief, it integrates Laplace laws for capillarity and minimizes the quadratic error on the height ( h ), width ( w ) and volume ( V ) of the spheroid ( Kalantarian et al, 2015 ) to extract the capillary constant , where M V represents the magnetic moment per unit volume.…”

“…Surface tension formally depends both on the adhesion energy between cells and on the interaction area (Amack and Manning, 2012). Cell-cell adhesion was first identified as a key component of tissue surface tension (Foty and Steinberg, 2005) giving rise to the differential adhesion hypothesis (DAH) postulated by Steinberg. Investigations of the DAH explored in vitro actually revealed the predominant role of actin contractility in surface tension (Maître et al, 2012) and shed light on the multitude of factors that contribute to surface tension (Brodland, 2002;Krieg et al, 2008;Heer and Martin, 2017;Nagle et al, 2021). The DAH was, therefore, extended to effective adhesion to take into account both cell-cell adhesion and cell mechanical properties implied in the surface contact area (Manning et al, 2010;Gonzalez-Rodriguez et al, 2012).…”