A method for analysing tissue motion and deformation during mammalian organogenesis.

Abstract

Understanding tissue morphogenesis is an important goal in developmental biology and tissue engineering. Accurately describing tissue deformation processes and how cell rearrangements contribute to these is a challenging task. Live analysis of morphogenesis in 3D is frequently used to obtain source data that allow to extract such features from developing organs. However, several limitations are encountered when applying these methodologies to mammalian embryos. The mouse embryo is the most frequently used model, but most studies use a very limited number of specimens and present only individual acquisitions due to constraints imposed by embryo culture and imaging. Here, we leverage live imaging of mouse heart development to build a novel computational framework that overcomes these limitations. Our methodology first extracts tissue dynamics from individual specimens and then integrates these fragmented datasets into a deterministic and dynamic consensus model of heart development. This integrated model allows us to quantify patterns of tissue growth and anisotropy and generate an in-silico fate map of cardiomyocyte trajectories. This work provides a foundational toolkit for dissecting the complex morphogenetic processes underlying mammalian organogenesis, converting collections of variable live images into robust, quantitative blueprints of development.