Studying gastrulation by invagination: The bending of a cell sheet by mechanical cell properties using 3D deformable cell based simulations
Fig 6
(A) Linear row of endodermal cells. This image shows two time points of an embryo with 512 cells that has an elongated endodermal plate shape. The simulation parameters are given in S2 Table. Constricting one row of endodermal cells mostly reduced the apical area of the cells vertically, due to the deformability of the passive surrounding cells and resistance of the constricting cells. When more rows constricted, the apical areas became rounder again, since now the force pattern changed (see S1 Graph). (B) Endodermal purse string constriction. The endodermal cells of a 512 celled blastulas with 87 endodermal cells constricted using a purse-string method. The single cell shows the center cell from this gastrula with a purse string constriction. The green zone indicates the constriction region. Due to the outward volume pressure created by the purse string constriction in the cell, the apical top stiffness also had to increase. During constriction the cell stiffness of the apical top (0–20%) was increased from k = 0.9 to k = 1.8 and the 20–60% zone from k = 0.5 to k = 1.4, to prevent excessive bulging of the apical area.