Mechanochemical coupling and developmental pattern formation

Patterning of nascent embryonic structures into their final forms can be influenced by initial geometry, underlying mechanical properties, and distribution of interacting chemical signals. Both mechanical and chemical processes can break the symmetry of an initially uniform state and initiate pattern formation. Here we describe recent work on four developmental systems in which coupling of mechanical and chemical processes are involved in the emerging pattern. These range in spatial scale from polarization of the single-cell Caenorhabditis elegans zygote to the looping of the chick gut over millimetres, and include local chemical and mechanical coupling at tissue scale in the vertebrate segmentation clock, the invaginating mesoderm of Drosophila, and during villus formation in mouse and chick intestine.