4.4 Article

Caenorhabditis elegans Gastrulation: A Model for Understanding How Cells Polarize, Change Shape, and Journey Toward the Center of an Embryo

Journal

GENETICS
Volume 214, Issue 2, Pages 265-277

Publisher

GENETICS SOCIETY AMERICA
DOI: 10.1534/genetics.119.300240

Keywords

apical constriction; C; elegans; cell polarity; cell shape; gastrulation; morphogenesis; WormBook

Funding

  1. National Institutes of Health [R01 GM-083071, R35 GM-134838, R35 GM-118081]

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Gastrulation is fundamental to the development of multicellular animals. Along with neurulation, gastrulation is one of the major processes of morphogenesis in which cells or whole tissues move from the surface of an embryo to its interior. Cell internalization mechanisms that have been discovered to date in Caenorhabditis elegans gastrulation bear some similarity to internalization mechanisms of other systems including Drosophila, Xenopus, and mouse, suggesting that ancient and conserved mechanisms internalize cells in diverse organisms. C. elegans gastrulation occurs at an early stage, beginning when the embryo is composed of just 26 cells, suggesting some promise for connecting the rich array of developmental mechanisms that establish polarity and pattern in embryos to the force-producing mechanisms that change cell shapes and move cells interiorly. Here, we review our current understanding of C. elegans gastrulation mechanisms. We address how cells determine which direction is the interior and polarize with respect to that direction, how cells change shape by apical constriction and internalize, and how the embryo specifies which cells will internalize and when. We summarize future prospects for using this system to discover some of the general principles by which animal cells change shape and internalize during development.

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