Finding your way through the winding streets of certain cities can be a real challenge without a map. To orient ourselves, we rely on a variety of information, including digital maps on our phones, as well as recognizable shops and landmarks. Cells in our bodies face a similar problem when building our organs during embryogenesis. They need instructions on where to go and how to behave. Luckily, like cell phone towers in a city, embryos feature special cells in specific locations, known as organizers, that send signals to other cells and help them organize to build our complex organs.
Some of these signals are molecules sent from the organizer, a privileged signaling center. Cells around it receive stronger or weaker signals depending on their location, and they take decisions accordingly. Errors in the location of these messaging centers in the tissue lead to embryonic malformations that can be fatal. Scientists have known the relevance of these signaling centers for a long time, but how these appear at specific locations remained elusive.
Discovery Through International Collaboration
It took an international collaboration of physicists and biologists to pinpoint the answer. Several years ago, the laboratories of Prof. Ophir Klein at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Prof. Otger Campàs at the Physics of Life Excellence Cluster of TU Dresden and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), had a hint of how it may work and joined forces. Together, they figured out that it is the mechanical pressure inside the growing tissue that dictates where the signaling center will emerge.
“Our work shows that both mechanical pressure and molecular signaling play a role in organ development,” said Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, Executive Director of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s, where he is also the David and Meredith Kaplan Distinguished Chair in Children’s Health, and co-corresponding author of the study.
Mechanical Pressure in Organizing Cells
The study, published in Nature Cell Biology, shows that as cells grow in the embryonic incisor tooth, they feel the growing pressure and use this information to organize themselves. “It’s like those toys that absorb water and grow in size,” said Neha Pincha Shroff, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Dentistry at UCSF, and co-first author of the study. “Just imagine that happening in a confined space. What happens in the incisor knot is that the cells multiply in number in a fixed space and this causes a pressure to build up at the center, which then becomes a cluster of specialized cells.” Like people in a crowded bar, cells in the tissue start feeling the squeeze from their peers. The researchers found that the cells feeling the stronger pressure stop growing and start sending signals to organize the other surrounding cells in the tooth. They were literally pressed into becoming the tooth organizer.
“We were able to use microdroplet techniques that our lab previously developed to figure out how the buildup of mechanical pressure affects organ formation,” said co-corresponding author of the study Otger Campàs, Ph.D., who is currently Managing Director, Professor and Chair of Tissue Dynamics at the Physics of Life Excellence Cluster of TU Dresden, and former Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UCSB. “It is really exciting that tissue pressure has a role in establishing signaling centers. It will be interesting to see if or how mechanical pressure affects other important developmental processes.”
Embryos use several of these signaling centers to guide cells as they form tissues and organs. Like building skyscrapers or bridges, sculpting our organs involves tight planning, a lot of coordination, and the right structural mechanics. Failure in any of these processes can be catastrophic when it comes to building a bridge, and it can also be damaging for us when growing in the womb.
“By understanding how an embryo forms organs, we can start to ask questions about what goes wrong in children born with congenital malformations,” said Ophir Klein. “This work may lead to additional research into how birth defects are formed and can be prevented.”
Reference: “Proliferation-driven mechanical compression induces signalling centre formation during mammalian organ development” by Neha Pincha Shroff, Pengfei Xu, Sangwoo Kim, Elijah R. Shelton, Ben J. Gross, Yucen Liu, Carlos O. Gomez, Qianlin Ye, Tingsheng Yu Drennon, Jimmy K. Hu, Jeremy B. A. Green, Otger Campàs and Ophir D. Klein, 3 April 2024, Nature Cell Biology.
DOI: 10.1038/s41556-024-01380-4
The study was funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (OK and OC) in the USA, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, and the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life of TU Dresden (OC).

News
How the FDA opens the door to risky chemicals in America’s food supply
Lining the shelves of American supermarkets are food products with chemicals linked to health concerns. To a great extent, the FDA allows food companies to determine for themselves whether their ingredients and additives are [...]
Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050
The number of lives lost around the world due to infections that are resistant to the medications intended to treat them could increase nearly 70% by 2050, a new study projects, further showing the [...]
How Can Nanomaterials Be Programmed for Different Applications?
Nanomaterials are no longer just small—they are becoming smart. Across fields like medicine, electronics, energy, and materials science, researchers are now programming nanomaterials to behave in intentional, responsive ways. These advanced materials are designed [...]
Microplastics Are Invading Our Arteries, and It Could Be Increasing Your Risk of Stroke
Higher levels of micronanoplastics were found in carotid artery plaque, especially in people with stroke symptoms, suggesting a potential new risk factor. People with plaque buildup in the arteries of their neck have been [...]
Gene-editing therapy shows early success in fighting advanced gastrointestinal cancers
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have completed a first-in-human clinical trial testing a CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique to help the immune system fight advanced gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. The results, recently published in The Lancet Oncology, show encouraging [...]
Engineered extracellular vesicles facilitate delivery of advanced medicines
Graphic abstract of the development of VEDIC and VFIC systems for high efficiency intracellular protein delivery in vitro and in vivo. Credit: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59377-y. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59377-y Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a technique [...]
Brain-computer interface allows paralyzed users to customize their sense of touch
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists are one step closer to developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that allows people with tetraplegia to restore their lost sense of touch. While exploring a digitally [...]
Scientists Flip a Gut Virus “Kill Switch” – Expose a Hidden Threat in Antibiotic Treatment
Scientists have long known that bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, live in our gut, but exactly what they do has remained elusive. Researchers developed a clever mouse model that can temporarily eliminate these phages [...]
Enhanced Antibacterial Polylactic Acid-Curcumin Nanofibers for Wound Dressing
Background Wound healing is a complex physiological process that can be compromised by infection and impaired tissue regeneration. Conventional dressings, typically made from natural fibers such as cotton or linen, offer limited functionality. Nanofiber [...]
Global Nanomaterial Regulation: A Country-by-Country Comparison
Nanomaterials are materials with at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres (about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair). Because of their tiny size, they have unique properties that can be useful in [...]
Pandemic Potential: Scientists Discover 3 Hotspots of Deadly Emerging Disease in the US
Virginia Tech researchers discovered six new rodent carriers of hantavirus and identified U.S. hotspots, highlighting the virus’s adaptability and the impact of climate and ecology on its spread. Hantavirus recently drew public attention following reports [...]
Studies detail high rates of long COVID among healthcare, dental workers
Researchers have estimated approximately 8% of Americas have ever experienced long COVID, or lasting symptoms, following an acute COVID-19 infection. Now two recent international studies suggest that the percentage is much higher among healthcare workers [...]
Melting Arctic Ice May Unleash Ancient Deadly Diseases, Scientists Warn
Melting Arctic ice increases human and animal interactions, raising the risk of infectious disease spread. Researchers urge early intervention and surveillance. Climate change is opening new pathways for the spread of infectious diseases such [...]
Scientists May Have Found a Secret Weapon To Stop Pancreatic Cancer Before It Starts
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have found that blocking the FGFR2 and EGFR genes can stop early-stage pancreatic cancer from progressing, offering a promising path toward prevention. Pancreatic cancer is expected to become [...]
Breakthrough Drug Restores Vision: Researchers Successfully Reverse Retinal Damage
Blocking the PROX1 protein allowed KAIST researchers to regenerate damaged retinas and restore vision in mice. Vision is one of the most important human senses, yet more than 300 million people around the world are at [...]
Differentiating cancerous and healthy cells through motion analysis
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found that the motion of unlabeled cells can be used to tell whether they are cancerous or healthy. They observed malignant fibrosarcoma [...]