Junctions, division, packing
The way cells pack and divide shapes the organs they build. In stretched monolayers, cells divide along their long axis, and this simple rule is enough for the tissue to recover an ordered packing and to dissipate stress (Wyatt et al., PNAS 2015). In a developing fly epithelium, myosin II controls how much the junctions between cells fluctuate in length, and these fluctuations guide the tissue towards a more ordered state (Curran et al., Developmental Cell 2017). More recently, with experiments done in Guillaume Charras's lab, we showed that tension at junctions is needed for cells to orient their division accurately in the plane of the tissue (Lisica et al., PNAS 2022). Mis-oriented divisions have been linked to defects in organisation and to cancer spread. This work is a collaboration with Buzz Baum (UCL) and Guillaume Charras (UCL).