法国艾克斯马赛大学Pierre-François Lenne团队发现马兰戈尼样组织流动增强胚胎类器官的对称性破坏。该研究于2025年3月11日发表在《自然—物理学》杂志上。

在多细胞动物的早期发育过程中，细胞自我组织以建立身体轴，如主要的头尾轴。已知有几种信号通路可以控制体轴的形成。

研究组表明组织力学也起着重要作用。他们关注的是小鼠胚胎干细胞最初球形聚集体中主轴的出现，这反映了早期小鼠胚胎发育过程中的事件。这些聚集体通过建立不同表达谱的结构域来打破旋转对称性，例如转录因子T/Brachyury和粘附分子E-cadherin。

通过结合定量显微镜和物理建模，研究组识别出具有再循环成分的大规模组织流，这些成分对对称性破坏有重大贡献。研究表明，再循环流类似于马兰戈尼流，是由组织表面张力的差异驱动的，使用聚集体融合实验进一步证实了这种差异的存在。该工作强调，身体轴的形成不仅是由生化过程驱动的，还可以通过组织流动来放大。研究组预计这种类型的扩增可能在许多其他类器官和体内系统中起作用。

附：英文原文

Title: Marangoni-like tissue flows enhance symmetry breaking of embryonic organoids

Author: Gsell, Simon, Tlili, Sham, Merkel, Matthias, Lenne, Pierre-Franois

Issue&Volume: 2025-03-11

Abstract: During the early development of multi-cellular animals, cells self-organize to set up the body axes such as the primary head-to-tail axis. Several signalling pathways are known to control body axis formation. Here we show that tissue mechanics also plays an important role. We focus on the emergence of a primary axis in initially spherical aggregates of mouse embryonic stem cells, which mirrors events in the development of the early mouse embryo. These aggregates break rotational symmetry by establishing domains of different expression profiles, for example, of the transcription factor T/Brachyury and the adhesion molecule E-cadherin. By combining quantitative microscopy and physical modelling, we identify large-scale tissue flows with a recirculating component that contribute substantially to the symmetry breaking. We show that the recirculating flows are—akin to Marangoni flows—driven by a difference in tissue surface tensions, whose existence we further confirm using aggregate fusion experiments. Our work highlights that body axis formation is not only driven by biochemical processes but can also be amplified by tissue flows. We expect that this type of amplification may operate in many other organoid and in vivo systems.

DOI: 10.1038/s41567-025-02802-2

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-025-02802-2