Stochastic Voronoi Tessellations as Models for Cellular Neighborhoods in Simple Multicellular Organisms

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Srinivasan, Anand, Hohn, Steph S. M. H., Goldstein, Raymond E.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Srinivasan, Anand
Hohn, Steph S. M. H.
Goldstein, Raymond E.
author_facet Srinivasan, Anand
Hohn, Steph S. M. H.
Goldstein, Raymond E.
contents Recent work on distinct multicellular organisms has revealed a hitherto unknown type of biological noise; rather than a regular arrangement, cellular neighborhood volumes, obtained by Voronoi tessellations of the cell locations, are broadly distributed and consistent with gamma distributions. We propose an explanation for those observations in the case of the alga $Volvox$, whose somatic cells are embedded in an extracellular matrix (ECM) they export. Both a solvable one-dimensional model of ECM growth derived from bursty transcriptional activity and a two-dimensional "Voronoi liquid" model are shown to provide one-parameter families that smoothly interpolate between the empirically-observed near-maximum-entropy gamma distributions and the crystalline limit of Gaussian distributions governed by the central limit theorem. These results highlight a universal consequence of intrinsic biological noise on the architecture of certain tissues.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_11939
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Stochastic Voronoi Tessellations as Models for Cellular Neighborhoods in Simple Multicellular Organisms
Srinivasan, Anand
Hohn, Steph S. M. H.
Goldstein, Raymond E.
Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
Biological Physics
Tissues and Organs
Recent work on distinct multicellular organisms has revealed a hitherto unknown type of biological noise; rather than a regular arrangement, cellular neighborhood volumes, obtained by Voronoi tessellations of the cell locations, are broadly distributed and consistent with gamma distributions. We propose an explanation for those observations in the case of the alga $Volvox$, whose somatic cells are embedded in an extracellular matrix (ECM) they export. Both a solvable one-dimensional model of ECM growth derived from bursty transcriptional activity and a two-dimensional "Voronoi liquid" model are shown to provide one-parameter families that smoothly interpolate between the empirically-observed near-maximum-entropy gamma distributions and the crystalline limit of Gaussian distributions governed by the central limit theorem. These results highlight a universal consequence of intrinsic biological noise on the architecture of certain tissues.
title Stochastic Voronoi Tessellations as Models for Cellular Neighborhoods in Simple Multicellular Organisms
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
Biological Physics
Tissues and Organs
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11939