Developmentally driven formation and dissolution of living chiral crystals

ORAL

Abstract

The emergent dynamics exhibited by collections of living organisms often shows signatures of symmetries that are broken at the single-organism level. At the same time, early organism development itself is accompanied by a sequence of symmetry breaking events that eventually establish the body plan. Combining these key aspects of collective phenomena and embryonic development, we describe here the spontaneous formation of hydrodynamically stabilized active crystals made of hundreds of starfish embryos during early development. As development progresses and embryos change morphology, crystals become increasingly disordered and eventually stop forming. We introduce a minimal hydrodynamic model that is fully parameterized by experimental measurements of single embryos and can quantitatively describe the stability, formation and rotation of emerging living crystals. A detailed analysis of developmental changes in the swimming properties of single embryos and associated sources of effective noise in embryo-embryo interactions provides insights into the mechanisms that eventually lead to the dissolution of clusters. Our work thereby quantitatively connects developmental symmetry breaking events on the single-embryo level with the remarkable macroscopic properties of a novel living chiral crystal system.

*A.M.: European Molecular Biology Organization Longterm Fellowship (ALTF 528-2019), Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Project 431144836); T.H.T.: NSF-Simons Center for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Biology at Harvard (award number 1764269), CSBD as ELBE Postdoctoral Fellow; Y.C.: MIT Curtis Marble Fellowship; P.J.F. and S.G.: Physics of Living Systems Fellowship Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grant no. GBMF4513). J.D.: Robert E. Collins Distinguished Scholarship fund; N.F: National Science Foundation CAREER Award; N.F. and J.D.: Sloan Foundation Grant (G-2021-16758)

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Publication: Preprint: arXiv:2105.07507

Presenters

  • Alexander Mietke

    • Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Authors

  • Alexander Mietke

    • Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Tzer Han Tan

    • Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics
    • Quantitative Biology Initiative, Harvard University; Center for Systems Biology Dresden
    • Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG)

  • Junang Li

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI

  • Yuchao Chen

    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Hugh Higinbotham

    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Peter J Foster

    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Shreyas Gokhale

    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Jorn Dunkel

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT
    • Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Nikta Fakhri

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI