Additional file 2 of Emergent material properties of developing epithelial tissues

Figure S2. Embryo staging and evolution of staging parameters. Individual embryos staged according to the evolution of three stereotypical parameters in dorsal closure: A average amnioserosa cell axial elongation bias (positive is oriented in mediolateral direction), B average cell length in the mediolateral direction, and C average cell area. Curves for individual embryos, which span on average 40 min of dorsal closure each, were manually aligned against a template curve covering the entire dorsal closure process [24]. The template corresponds to dashed black lines. The grey shaded area is excluded from our analysis. This staging procedure is accurate to within 10 min. Notice that there is an appreciable variability between embryos. That the average cell area of the embryos analysed is generally above the template curve is because of under-sampling of more marginal cells. This is due to limitations of the imaging procedure, in which for the temporal resolution, we were not able to image the whole amnioserosa but were restricted to the more central region of the tissue. (PDF 1187 kb