Experimental evaluation of apparent tissue surface tension based on the exact solution of the Laplace equation

¹  Department of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri - Columbia, MO 65211, USA
²  Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri - Columbia, MO 65211, USA
³  Department of Biophysics and Medical Informatics, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara 300041 Timisoara, Romania

Corresponding authors: kosztini@missouri.edu forgacsg@missouri.edu

Received: 23 October 2007
Accepted: 20 December 2007

Abstract

The notion of apparent tissue surface tension offered a systematic way to interpret certain morphogenetic processes in early development. It also allowed deducing quantitative information on cellular and molecular parameters that is otherwise difficult to obtain. To accurately determine such tensions we combined novel experiments with the exact solution of the Laplace equation for the profile of a liquid drop under the employed experimental conditions and used the exact solution to evaluate data collected on tissues. Our results confirm that tissues composed of adhesive and motile cells indeed can be characterized in terms of well-defined apparent surface tension. Our experimental technique presents a way to measure liquid interfacial tensions under conditions when known methods fail.