Disorder in cellular packing can alter proliferation dynamics to regulate growth

Area of Science:

• Cell biology
• Biophysics
• Developmental biology

Background:

• Organ growth regulation mechanisms remain incompletely understood, especially in densely packed epithelial tissues.
• Cell-cell contact and tissue geometry are hypothesized to play roles in controlling cell proliferation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To elucidate the mechanisms governing organ growth arrest in epithelial tissues.
• To model cell proliferation control as a collective dynamical phenomenon.

Main Methods:

• Modeling organ growth arrest as a collective dynamical transition in coupled oscillators on disordered lattices.
• Analyzing the relationship between cellular morphology, cell-cell contact signaling, and cell-cycle dynamics.

Main Results:

• Growth arrest was explained as a collective dynamical transition of coupled oscillators.
• Homogeneous cellular morphologies led to increased cell-cell contact signals.
• A critical threshold in cell-cell contact signals triggered coordinated cessation of cell-cycle oscillators.

Conclusions:

• Cell proliferation control is causally linked to the geometry of cellular packing.
• The study provides a dynamical systems framework for understanding tissue growth regulation.