Evidence that tissue recoil in the early Drosophila embryo is a passive not active process

Understanding tissue morphogenesis is impossible without knowing the mechanical properties of the tissue being shaped. Although techniques for measuring tissue material properties are continually being developed, methods for determining how individual proteins contribute to mechanical properties are very limited. Here, we developed two complementary techniques for the acute inactivation of spaghetti squash (the Drosophila myosin regulatory light chain), one based on the recently introduced (auxin-inducible degron 2 (AID2) system, and the other based on a novel method for conditional protein aggregation that results in nearly instantaneous protein inactivation. Combining these techniques with rheological measurements, we show that passive material properties of the cellularization-stage Drosophila embryo are essentially unaffected by myosin activity. These results suggest that this tissue is elastic, not predominantly viscous, on the developmentally relevant timescale.