Figure 3
From: Segregation mechanisms of tissue cells: from experimental data to models
Gas and liquid phase ordering and segregation of retinal cells. Upper panel: Gas and liquid phase ordering in SF6 under reduced gravity, after a thermal quench of 0.7 mK below the critical point (45.564 C). Gas and liquid eventually order with the liquid phase wetting the container wall and surrounding the gas phase, corresponding to wall-liquid interfacial tension < wall-gas interfacial tension. a, b and c correspond to 120 s, 275 s and 3960 s after quench, respectively. Lower panel: Sorting out of chicken embryonic pigmented epithelial cells (dark) from chicken embryonic neural retinal cells (light). The average aggregate size is 200 μm. At the end of sorting, neural retinal cells preferentially wet the external tissue culture medium surrounding the aggregates. Medium-neural retina and medium-pigmented epithelium interfacial tensions are 1.6 dyne/cm and 12.6 dyne/cm, respectively. a, b and c correspond to 17 h, 42 h and 73 h after initiation of sorting, respectively. From Beysens al. (2000) with permission of Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.