A hydraulic instability drives the cell death decision in the nematode germline

Nicolas T Chartier; Arghyadip Mukherjee; Julia Pfanzelter; Sebastian Fürthauer; Ben T Larson; Anatol W Fritsch; Rana Amini; Moritz Kreysing; Frank Jülicher; Stephan W Grill

doi:10.1038/s41567-021-01235-x

A hydraulic instability drives the cell death decision in the nematode germline

Nat Phys. 2021;17(8):920-925. doi: 10.1038/s41567-021-01235-x. Epub 2021 May 20.

Authors

Nicolas T Chartier^#¹, Arghyadip Mukherjee^#^{2

3

4}, Julia Pfanzelter^#^{1

2}, Sebastian Fürthauer⁵, Ben T Larson^{6

7}, Anatol W Fritsch², Rana Amini², Moritz Kreysing^{2

4

8}, Frank Jülicher^{3

4

8}, Stephan W Grill^{1

2

4

8}

Affiliations

¹ Biotechnology Center, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
² Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), Dresden, Germany.
³ Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS), Dresden, Germany.
⁴ Center for Systems Biology Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
⁵ Center for Computational Biology, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY USA.
⁶ Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA.
⁷ Biophysics Graduate Group, University of California, Berkeley, CA USA.
⁸ Cluster of Excellence-Physics of Life, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Oocytes are large cells that develop into an embryo upon fertilization¹. As interconnected germ cells mature into oocytes, some of them grow-typically at the expense of others that undergo cell death^2-4. We present evidence that in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, this cell-fate decision is mechanical and related to tissue hydraulics. An analysis of germ cell volumes and material fluxes identifies a hydraulic instability that amplifies volume differences and causes some germ cells to grow and others to shrink, a phenomenon that is related to the two-balloon instability⁵. Shrinking germ cells are extruded and they die, as we demonstrate by artificially reducing germ cell volumes via thermoviscous pumping⁶. Our work reveals a hydraulic symmetry-breaking transition central to the decision between life and death in the nematode germline.

Keywords: Biological physics; Biophysics.