Sommaire:

Cells and tissues rearrange under the action of chemical signals. Numerous examples are found in eggshell development, wing disc remodeling, dorsal closure, wound healing, etc. In many cases, this can be attributed to changing local mechanical properties of cytoskeleton due to motor attachment/detachment and rearrangement of the actin network triggered by signaling. Motor activity may either stiffen the network due to stronger prestress or soften it due to motor agitation, in accordance with experimental data. Prestress anisotropy, which may be induced by redistribution of motors triggered by either external force or a chemical signal, causes polarization of cells and anisotropy of elastic moduli. This leads to reshaping of tissues and may cause symmetry-breaking instabilities that induce local inhomogeneities. We model interaction of chemical signaling, polarization, and mechanical deformation both with the help of cellular mechano-diffusive models (applied to reshaping of the Drosophila wing disc and spreading of an epithelial layer in wound healing) and continuous models that facilitate analysis of the various instabilities.

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