Credit: Guangxia Miao
Neolamination
Embryos are a roiling sea of motion. Yet, within this tumult, migrating cells maintain selective, dynamic cell-cell interactions as they move, and then make specific and stable contacts when they reach their destinations despite powerful forces caused by ongoing morphogenesis. Cell migrations are widespread during development, homeostasis, and in disease, and mechanisms of chemotaxis and motility have been extensively studied. Every cell that migrates goes somewhere in particular to do something specific yet how migratory cells make new connections at their destinations, a process we call neolamination, has been largely unexplored. We have discovered surprising molecular mechanisms governing neolamination in Drosophila.
