Repulsion between pigment cells helps to explain how adult zebrafish develop the stripes for which they are named.
Shigeru Kondo and his colleagues at Osaka University in Japan looked at cultured black melanophore and yellow xanthophore pigment cells from the animals (pictured top). They found that when the black pigment cells came into contact with the yellow ones, their membrane potential changed, shifting the charge at the cells' surface. In 60% of such encounters, the melanophores moved away from the xanthophores. However, in mutant fish that lack regular stripes (bottom), the two cell types always stayed in contact with each other.
The authors say that although repulsion alone is not sufficient to explain pattern formation, repulsion could be involved in the stripes' development.
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Stripes from shifting cells. Nature 482, 279 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/482279d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/482279d
