Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2021 Nov;2021:4139-4142. doi: 10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9630053.
Notch signaling is responsible for creating contrasting states of differentiation among neighboring cells during organism's early development. Various factors can affect this highly conserved intercellular signaling pathway, for the formation of fine-grained pattern in cell tissues. As cells undergo dramatic structural changes during development, one of the factors that can influence cell-cell communication is cell morphology. In this study, we elucidate the role of cell morphology on mosaic pattern formation in a realistic epithelial layer cell model. We discovered that cell signaling strength is inversely related to the cell area, such that smaller cells have higher probability/tendency of becoming signal producing cells as compared to larger cells during early embryonic days. In a nutshell, our work highlights the role of cell morphology on the stochastic cell fate decision process in the epithelial layer of multicellular organisms.
Notch 信号通路负责在生物体早期发育过程中为相邻细胞创造出分化的对比状态。各种因素都可以影响这种高度保守的细胞间信号通路，从而在细胞组织中形成精细的图案。由于细胞在发育过程中会发生剧烈的结构变化，其中一个可以影响细胞间通讯的因素是细胞形态。在这项研究中，我们阐明了细胞形态对真实上皮层细胞模型中镶嵌模式形成的作用。我们发现细胞信号强度与细胞面积成反比，因此在早期胚胎期，与较大的细胞相比，较小的细胞更有可能/倾向成为信号产生细胞。简而言之，我们的工作强调了细胞形态在多细胞生物上皮层中随机细胞命运决策过程中的作用。
