Fig. 3: A hydraulic instability drives cell shrinkage that triggers cell death.
From: A hydraulic instability drives the cell death decision in the nematode germline
a, Blue dots, cell volume V along the germline for 4,030 germ cells from 7 gonad arms where apoptosis was inhibited by ced-3(RNAi). Vertical dashed lines and grey bars in a and b denote the region of transition between the growth modes of germ cells for ced-3(RNAi) (Fig. 1b). Green open circles, germ-cell-to-rachis current J in ced-3(RNAi) along the germline (Supplementary Information). Green line, profile of the germ-cell-to-rachis current J for ced-3(RNAi) as predicted by theory, using physical parameters and the profile of material uptake S obtained for the non-treated control (Supplementary Information, Fig. 1d and Supplementary Fig. 2d). b, Rachis flux Qr along the gonad for ced-3(RNAi) obtained from 9 gonad arms (green open circles; Supplementary Information), together with the corresponding theoretical prediction (green line). c, FLUCS experiments. Left: schematic. Right: representative fluorescence images before and after bidirectional FLUCS as a control (CTRL; top) and unidirectional FLUCS (OUT; bottom) (magenta, LifeAct::mKate; cyan, GFP-nmy-2 and Histone-Dendra). d, Relative occurrence of rachis bridge closure and rounding up within 3 h for cells treated with FLUCS CTRL or FLUCS OUT and their untargeted neighbours; **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Only the FLUCS OUT-treated cells (right-most bar) displayed a significant increase in commencing apoptosis within 3 h. Scale bar, 5 μm. Error bars indicate the error of the mean at 95% confidence.
