Tissue folding requires proper coordination between constricting cells and their neighbors that are not undergoing cell shape changes. Many studies have addressed how different cell populations contribute to tissue rearrangements but few have shown how forces are then restrained to specific compartments.

Here, the authors show that Zasp52 acts as a coordinator between junctional actomyosin in different tissues during embryogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster. Zasp52 reinforces actomyosin supracellular cables at tissue boundaries, balancing force distribution and allowing cell shape changes to occur.

This model explains how force propagation is restrained to a given tissue through the action of actomyosin cables and Zasp52, which create boundaries that mechanically isolate tissues as they are being rearranged. Given the evolutionary conservation of Zasp52, it may also perform similar roles during development in other animals.

This preprint has been assigned the following badges: New Hypothesis, Cross-Validation, Open Data.

Read the preprint on bioRxiv (Ashour et al., 2022): https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.11.511783.