The Influence of Cellular Characteristics on the Evolution of Shape Homeostasis
Journal article, 2017

The importance of individual cells in a developing multicellular organism is well known, but precisely how the individual cellular characteristics of those cells collectively drive the emergence of robust, homeostatic structures is less well understood. For example, cell communication via a diffusible factor allows for information to travel across large distances within the population, and cell polarization makes it possible to form structures with a particular orientation, but how do these processes interact to produce a more robust and regulated structure? In this study we investigate the ability of cells with different cellular characteristics to grow and maintain homeostatic structures. We do this in the context of an individual-based model where cell behavior is driven by an intracellular network that determines the cell phenotype. More precisely, we investigated evolution with 96 different permutations of our model, where cell motility, cell death, long-range growth factor (LGF), short-range growth factor (SGF), and cell polarization were either present or absent. The results show that LGF has the largest positive influence on the fitness of the evolved solutions. SGF and polarization also contribute, but all other capabilities essentially increase the search space, effectively making it more difficult to achieve a solution. By perturbing the evolved solutions, we found that they are highly robust to both mutations and wounding. In addition, we observed that by evolving solutions in more unstable environments they produce structures that were more robust and adaptive. In conclusion, our results suggest that robust collective behavior is most likely to evolve when cells are endowed with long-range communication, cell polarisation, and selection pressure from an unstable environment.

behavior

Shape homeostasis

artificial regulatory networks

Computer Science

evolution

development

differentiation

target shape

migration

Author

Philip Gerlee

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Mathematical Sciences

D. Basanta

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute

A. R. A. Anderson

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute

Artificial Life

1064-5462 (ISSN) 1530-9185 (eISSN)

Vol. 23 3 424-448

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories

Cell and Molecular Biology

Areas of Advance

Life Science Engineering (2010-2018)

DOI

10.1162/ARTL_a_00240

More information

Created

10/8/2017