FBS Colloquia No.328RIKEN BDR

Epithelial cell chirality emerges through spatial organization of cytoskeleton

Living organisms show left-right symmetry at the molecular, cellular, tissue and organismal levels. The chirality of organ and tissue is derived from the cellular chirality that compose of them, and the cellular chirality emerges from the molecular chirality within the cell. However, the principle of the emergence of cellular chirality is still unclear. To address this question, we experimentally study the dynamical chiral behaviors of epithelial cells and seek a theoretical understanding of how the chiral behaviors arise from the molecular-level chirality. Our experiment and theory suggest that the cell chirality emerges as a collective behavior of actin and myosin cytoskeleton even without macroscopic chiral orientational order of the cytoskeleton.