A Nudge or a Shove: Altering Actomyosin Pulse Profiles In Vivo (Developmental Cell)

Pulsed actomyosin contractions drive morphogenetic processes, but how cyclic frequencies and amplitudes of contractions are tuned to achieve processive shrinking of cell surfaces remains unclear. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Cavanaugh et al. (2020) use optogenetics and biophysical modeling to demonstrate how cells respond to different oscillatory force profiles.