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Published November 25, 2011 | Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Polarization of PAR Proteins by Advective Triggering of a Pattern-Forming System

Abstract

In the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote, a conserved network of partitioning-defective (PAR) polarity proteins segregates into an anterior and a posterior domain, facilitated by flows of the cortical actomyosin meshwork. The physical mechanisms by which stable asymmetric PAR distributions arise from transient cortical flows remain unclear. We present evidence that PAR polarity arises from coupling of advective transport by the flowing cell cortex to a multistable PAR reaction-diffusion system. By inducing transient PAR segregation, advection serves as a mechanical trigger for the formation of a PAR pattern within an otherwise stably unpolarized system. We suggest that passive advective transport in an active and flowing material may be a general mechanism for mechanochemical pattern formation in developmental systems.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science. We thank C. Hoege, A. Pozniakovsky, and S. Ernst for help in generating CAI-optimized transgenes and S. Jaensch for embryo size measurements. This work was supported by the ARCHES Minerva Foundation and the European Molecular Biology Organization Young Investigator Programme (S.W.G.), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Marie Curie Grant (219286) from the European Commission (N.W.G.), the Human Frontier Science Program (J.S.B.), and the MPI-PKS Visitors Program (D.C. and E.M.N.).

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