The spatial distribution of tension on E-cadherin in migrating border cells. Danfeng Cai¹, Li He², Jessica Sawyer³, Denise Montell¹. 1) Department of Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; 2) Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, HHMI, Boston, MA; 3) Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC.

   Cell migration involves constant interactions between the cell and its environment. While great progress has been made in identifying the molecules that mediate these interactions, tools for measuring mechanical forces in tissues without perturbing them have been lacking, limiting our ability to probe how biochemical signals and mechanical forces feed back on one another during morphogenesis. In order to overcome this obstacle, we developed a FRET-based sensor to measure tension across E-Cadherin molecules in vivo with high spatial resolution and without perturbing the system. We have used this E-Cadherin tension sensor to examine the spatial distribution of forces during collective border cell migration in the Drosophila ovary.