About the author

Dan Rhoads

Dan is a postdoc working at the University of Cyprus in developmental biology. He has a BSc in molecular biology and a PhD pharmacology and biochemistry.

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Form follows physics in the fly eye, say Sascha Hilgenfeldt, Sinem Erisken, and Richard Carthew

Simple forces, complex shapes: While most biological features appear complex in their geometries and varieties of components, appearances can be deceiving. That finding is supported by a recent modeling study by Hilgenfeldt, et al., looking at the arrangement of cone cells in the Drosophilia eye. They found that cell elasticity and adhesion strength alone can explain the cell arrangement, into the image shown (source: Hilgenfeldt/NAS).

What caught my eye was, in the commentary article, this bit: “The idea that a small set of physical forces governs the shape of tissues goes back at least a hundred years, but there has been little evidence to support it.”

Huh?^*

*As Vogel and Sheetz describe in their 2006 review, “The shapes of eukaryotic cells and ultimately the organisms that they form are defined by cycles of mechanosensing, mechanotransduction and mechanoresponse. Local sensing of force or geometry is transduced into biochemical signals that result in cell responses even for complex mechanical parameters such as substrate rigidity and cell-level form. These responses regulate cell growth, differentiation, shape changes and cell death.”

There’s a whole field devoted to studying (both mathematical modeling and especially experimental study) how physical forces determine geometrical structures. It’s called mechanotransduction. Hilgenfeldt, et al., present a very nice study of mechanotransduction and mathematical modeling thereof, but they’re not the first in that field.

1. Robinson R, (2008) J Cell Biol, 180(2):250. doi:10.1083/jcb.1802rr4
2. Hilgenfeldt S, Erisken S, Carthew RW, (2008) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 105(3):907-911. doi:10.1073/pnas.0711077105
3. Vogel V, Sheetz M, (2006) Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol, 7:265-275. doi:10.1038/nrm1890