Contact-mediated cellular communication supplements positional information to regulate spatial patterning during development

Abstract

Development in multi-cellular organisms is marked by a high degree of spatial organization of the cells attaining distinct fates in the embryo. We show that receptor-ligand interaction between cells in close physical proximity adaptively regulates the local process of selective gene expression in the presence of a global field set up by a diffusing morphogen that provides positional cues. This allows information from the cellular neighborhood to be incorporated into the emergent thresholds of morphogen concentration that dictate cell fate, consistent with recent experiments.

arXiv comment6 pages, 3 figures + 6 pages Supplementary Information

References in corpus (7)

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• The sloppy model universality class and the Vandermonde matrix
• Robust formation of morphogen gradients
• The role of spatial averaging in the precision of gene expression patterns
• Scaling and regeneration of self-organized patterns
• Morphogen Gradient from a Noisy Source
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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Disorder in cellular packing can alter proliferation dynamics to regulate growth
• Flags, Landscapes and Signaling: Contact-mediated inter-cellular interactions enable plasticity in fate determination driven by positional information
• Precision of morphogen-driven tissue patterning during development is enhanced through contact-mediated cellular interactions