Spatio-temporal remodeling of extracellular matrix orients epithelial sheet folding

Abstract

Biological systems are inherently noisy; however, they produce highly stereotyped tissue morphology. Drosophila pupal wings show a highly stereotypic folding through uniform expansion and subsequent buckling of wing epithelium within a surrounding cuticle sac. The folding pattern produced by buckling is generally stochastic; it is thus unclear how buckling leads to stereotypic tissue folding of the wings. We found that the extracellular matrix (ECM) protein, Dumpy, guides the position and direction of buckling-induced folds. Dumpy anchors the wing epithelium to the overlying cuticle at specific tissue positions. Tissue-wide alterations of Dumpy deposition and degradation yielded different buckling patterns. In summary, we propose that spatio-temporal ECM remodeling shapes stereotyped tissue folding through dynamic interactions between the epithelium and its external structures. One-Sentence SummaryRemodeling of extracellular matrix protein, Dumpy, guides epithelial tissue folding during Drosophila wing development.