Stabilization of active tissue deformation by a dynamic morphogen gradient

Abstract: A key process during animal morphogenesis is oriented tissue deformation, which is often driven by internally generated active stresses. Yet, such active oriented materials are prone to well-known instabilities, raising the question of how oriented tissue deformation can be robust during morphogenesis. In a simple scenario, we recently showed that active oriented deformation can be stabilized by the boundary-imposed gradient of a scalar field, which represents, e.g., a morphogen gradient in a developing embryo. Here, we discuss a more realistic scenario, where the morphogen is produced by a localized source region, diffuses across the tissue, and degrades. Consistent with our earlier results, we find that oriented tissue deformation is stable in the gradient-extensile case, i.e. when active stresses act to extend the tissue along the direction of the gradient, but it is unstable in the gradient-contractile case. In addition, we now show that gradient-contractile tissues can not be stabilized even by morphogen diffusion. Finally, we point out the existence of an additional instability, which results from the interplay of tissue shear and morphogen diffusion. Our theoretical results explain the lack of gradient-contractile tissues in the biological literature, suggesting that the active matter instability acts as an evolutionary selection criterion.