Desynchronizing Embryonic Cell Division Waves Reveals the Robustness of Xenopus laevis Development

The early Xenopus laevis embryo is replete with dynamic spatial waves. One such wave, the cell division wave, emerges from the collective cell division timing of first tens and later hundreds of cells throughout the embryo. Here, we show that cell division waves do not propagate between neighboring cells and do not rely on cell-to-cell coupling to maintain their division timing. Instead, intrinsic variation in division period autonomously and gradually builds these striking patterns of cell division. Disrupting this pattern of division by placing embryos in a temperature gradient resulted in highly asynchronous entry to the midblastula transition and misexpression of the mesodermal marker Xbra. Remarkably, this gene expression defect is corrected during involution, resulting in delayed yet normal Xbra expression and viable embryos. This implies the existence of a previously unknown mechanism for normalizing mesodermal gene expression during involution. [Display omitted] •Embryonic cell division waves are not caused by spatial cell-cell coupling•Cell division waves gradually build up as a result of intrinsic period differences•Desynchronizing the early divisions leads to mesoderm marker misexpression•Mesoderm misexpression is corrected during involution, leading to viable embryos Anderson et al. apply strong temperature differences across young frog embryos to desynchronize the regular cell division timing. They find that all cells behave as independent oscillators. Moreover, they see that, although mesoderm induction becomes abnormal initially, the embryos are still able to get their development back on track.