Stiffness of primordial germ cells is required for their extravasation in avian embryos

AbstractDuring metastasis intravascularly circulating cancer cells undergo extravasation, which frequently takes place in vascular capillary beds 1–3. It remains poorly understood how the extravasation in the capillary beds is regulated. To address this question, chicken primordial germ cells (PGCs) serve as a powerful model since they circulate in blood stream and extravasate at a specific site of capillary bed near the forming gonad 4–6. The extravasation consists of two steps, the intravascular arrest of cells and their subsequent transmigration through the endothelial lining. We here demonstrate with live imaging at a single cell level in vivo that the arrest of PGCs is predominantly governed by occlusion at a narrow path in the capillary bed. In addition, this occlusion is enabled by a hightened stiffness of the PGCs, revealed by atomic force microscopy indentation analyses. The PGCs’ stiffness is regulated by actin polymerization: inhibition of the actin function causes not only a failure of PGC occlusion in the capillary bed, but also a failure of PGC colonization in the gonads at later stages. Following the occlusion, PGCs reset their stiffness to soften in order to squeeze through the endothelial lining as they transmigrate. The discovery of F-actin-mediated stiffness in pre-extravasating cells provides a model for understanding of dynamic mechanism by which other cells, including metastasizing cancer cells, extravasate in capillary beds.