| Issue |
EPL
Volume 143, Number 2, July 2023
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 27001 | |
| Number of page(s) | 7 | |
| Section | Biological and soft matter physics | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/ace4f0 | |
| Published online | 24 July 2023 | |
Hydra morphogenesis as phase transition dynamics
1 The Racah Institute of Physics, Edmond J. Safra Campus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem 9190401, Israel
2 Department of Physics and Network Biology Research Laboratories, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Haifa 32000, Israel
(a) E-mail: erez@physics.technion.ac.il (corresponding author)
Received: 18 April 2023
Accepted: 6 July 2023
We utilize whole-body Hydra regeneration from a small tissue segment to develop a physics framework for animal morphogenesis. Introducing experimental controls over this process, an external electric field and a drug that blocks gap junctions, allows us to characterize the essential step in the morphological transition —from a spherical shape to an elongated spheroid. We find that spatial fluctuations of the Ca2+ distribution in the Hydra's tissue drive this transition and construct a field-theoretic model that explains the morphological transition as a first-order–like phase transition resulting from the coupling of the Ca2+ field and the tissue's local curvature. Various predictions of this model are verified experimentally.
© 2023 The author(s)
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