Cilia-driven epithelial folding and unfolding in an early-diverging animal

Multicellular organisms utilize epithelial folding to achieve remarkable three-dimensional forms. During embryonic development, stereotypical epithelial folds emerge from underlying active cellular and molecular processes including cell shape change and differential cell growth. However, the origin of epithelial folding in early animals and how folding may be harnessed in synthetic systems remain open questions. Here we discover a novel modality of behavior-induced epithelial folding and unfolding arising from cilia-substrate adhesion and ciliary walking in the basal animal Trichoplax adhaerens (phylum Placozoa). We show that T. adhaerens is capable of exhibiting dynamic non-stereotyped folding states, providing a novel 3D perspective to an organism previously only characterized in its 2D state. We correlate these folding states to local substrate geometry, revealing that the animal conforms to available substrate surface area, promoting the maintenance of a folded state. Using 4D fluor..., , # Data from: Cilia-driven epithelial folding and unfolding in an early-diverging animal

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.xpnvx0kvd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xpnvx0kvd)

## Description of the data and file structure

The following datasets were collected in support of the study of cilia-driven folding and unfolding behavior exhibited by the early-diverging animal *Trichoplax adhaerens*. The headings below correspond to zip files included in this dataset.  Animal numbering (e.g., \"animal1\") is not preserved throughout the dataset, and only serves to organize data within a given section.

#### 1. animal folding on glass capillaries

This section contains data from experiments testing *T. adhaerens'* folding state as a function of substrate geometry. Animals were allowed to attach to the surface of a glass capillary of either 1mm or 0.17mm outer diameter, suspended in a dish of artificial sea water.

* The directory structure is `[capillary diameter] / [unfolding trial]`
* `animal_area_on_...,