Getting Into Shape

I love a Zumba class to feel the rhythm and get energised for the day. Turns out embryos do too – sort of! A fertilised egg must become a blastocyst, by repeatedly dividing in two, before it can get started on morphogenesis – the shaping of an organism. This shaping relies on the contractility of the actomyosin cortex – a thin layer of actin and myosin proteins under the cell surface that provides tension and gives the cell shape. It turns out that the actomyosin cortex needs a wake-up call to get going. Researchers found that with each round of cell division, the cell surface becomes softer allowing the rhythmic wave of contractions to ramp up in frequency, awakening the actomyosin cortex ready to help sculpt the embryo. This video shows one-, two-, four- and eight-cell embryos and the rhythmic contractions they experience (magenta arrows show upward movement, green show downward).

Written by Sophie Arthur

Sophie Arthur

former Science Communications Officer MRC LMS

Formerly a stem cell biologist, Sophie has since moved into science communication working at the MRC LMS. She also writes an award winning science and education blog Soph talks science.

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• Video from work by Özge Özgüç and colleagues
• Institut Curie, PSL Research University, Sorbonne Université, CNRS UMR3215, INSERM U934, Paris, France
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, March 2022