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Fig. 4 | BMC Biology

Fig. 4

From: Emergent material properties of developing epithelial tissues

Fig. 4

\(\bar \tau \) dependence of material parameters and emergent material properties of amnioserosa cells. Average stiffness a and loss tangent b for different values of \(\bar \tau \) within its estimated physiological range. The data are averaged over all cell cycles within the time slices indicated by the colour legend. c Stiffness and d loss tangent vs. time averaged over 100-s bins. Stiffness is shown in units of \(\kappa \bar \tau \) and the shaded area corresponds to 95 % confidence intervals. The time evolution shows that amnioserosa cells become stiffer and more solid-like as dorsal closure progresses. e Schematic of the transition during dorsal closure (DC) from a fluid-like apicomedial sheet with no net contraction to a net contractile solid-like sheet. This transition is accompanied by increases in effective mechanical properties: a doubling of stiffness (E) and a quadrupling of stress (σ). The apicomedial material is shown to have emergent properties of a viscoelastic solid, and can usefully be compared to a standard linear solid, in which the fluid-like spring and dashpot in series dominate early dorsal closure, after which the solid-like spring in parallel progressively dominates

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