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Updated: Jan 18, 2026

Real Time and Repeated Measurement of Skeletal Muscle Growth in Individual Live Zebrafish Subjected to Altered Electrical Activity
Published on: June 16, 2022
Cell-to-cell influence on growth in large populations
Mikhail E Kandel1,2,3, Wenlong Lu2,4,3, Jon Liang1
1Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61820, USA.
Abstract:
Recent studies have revealed the importance of outlier cells in complex cellular systems. Quantifying heterogeneity in such systems may lead to a better understanding of organ engineering, microtumor growth, and disease models, as well as more precise drug design. We used the ability of quantitative phase imaging to perform long-term imaging of cell growth to estimate the "influence" of cellular clusters on their neighbors. We validated our approach by analyzing epithelial and fibroblast cultures imaged over the course of several days. Interestingly, we found that there is a significant number of cells characterized by a medium correlation between their growth rate and distance (modulus of the Pearson coefficient between 0.25-.5). Furthermore, we found a small percentage of cells exhibiting strong such correlations, which we label as "influencer" cellular clusters. Our approach might find important applications in studying dynamic phenomena, such as organogenesis and metastasis.
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