Faculty Opinions recommendation of Metabolic constraints drive self-organization of specialized cell groups.
Year: 2020
Type: peer-review
Abstract: How phenotypically distinct states in isogenic cell populations appear and stably coexist remains unresolved.We find that within a mature, clonal yeast colony developing in low glucose, cells arrange into metabolically disparate cell groups.Using this system, we model and experimentally identify metabolic constraints sufficient to drive such self-assembly.Beginning in a uniformly gluconeogenic state, cells exhibiting a contrary, high pentose phosphate pathway activity state, spontaneously appear and proliferate, in a spatially constrained manner.Gluconeogenic cells in the colony produce and provide a resource, which we identify as trehalose.Above threshold concentrations of external trehalose, cells switch to the new metabolic state and proliferate.A selforganized system establishes, where cells in this new state are sustained by trehalose consumption, which thereby restrains other cells in the trehalose producing, gluconeogenic state.Our work suggests simple physico-chemical principles that determine how isogenic cells spontaneously selforganize into structured assemblies in complimentary, specialized states.
Author: Wenying Shou
Institution: University of Washington
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4238617930