Collective Behavior From Cells to Societies: Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries (2015) / Chapter Skim
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IDR Team Summary 8: From single cells to tissue: What causes organismality to emerge from individual cells, achieving control of conflict at lower levels so the organism becomes the unit of adaptation?
IDR Team Summary 8: From single cells to tissue: What causes organismality to emerge from individual cells, achieving control of conflict at lower levels so the organism becomes the unit of adaptation?
Pages 85-98
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From page 85... ...
This may be because the majority of cell and molecular biologists have been intensely interested in single cells and molecules, developmental biologists have been involved intensely in genetic manipulations to discover single players in pathways in developing organs, 85
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From page 86... ...
But why shouldn't physiologists and molecular biologists who are much closer in discipline collaborate to answer our fundamental problems, for example? The challenge for the working group is to answer the following question: What causes organismality to emerge from individual cells, achieving control of conflict at lower levels so the organism becomes the unit of adaptation?
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From page 87... ...
Does IDR Team Challenge 1 "Using our understanding of cooperation in cognitive organisms to understand cooperation in organisms or entities without brains and vice versa" have relevance to this challenge? Do single cells by themselves and individual cells within a tissue or organ differ functionally?
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From page 88... ...
IL-25 causes apoptosis of IL-25R–expressing breast cancer cells without toxicity to nonmalignant cells. Science Translational Medicine 2011;3(78)
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From page 89... ...
Each of the three groups with this task approached it in a different way, and IDR Team 8A focused primarily on identifying the qualities most important to making multicellular organisms work -- and fail. Experimenters have seen normal cells changing type entirely or growing out of control when put in a petri dish.
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From page 90... ...
The cells that make up multicellular organisms are not robust on their own but gain adaptability as part of the group by sharing energetic tasks and differentiating or specializing to different levels to suit the organism's overall needs. But in some cases, such as when a cancer cell detaches from its original tissue and migrates to a different part of the body in the process of metastasis, a cell will entirely abandon its responsibilities and race elsewhere to grow.
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From page 91... ...
By comparing the real and virtual tissues and changing the breadth of characteristics included in the virtual cells, the researchers will be able to tell which elements of the real cells are contributing to successful multicellular function. That way, when tissue engineers or cancer researchers set out to influence cellular systems and induce collective behaviors, they will know which aspects are most important to control.
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From page 92... ...
As the team's final-day presenter put it: "We can identify those key knobs, and once we do that we can begin to play with them." And, through that play, researchers would get a handle on how organisms develop and build a bridge between basic biological principles and broader, macrocosmic interactions. Their discoveries would apply everywhere from biological threats like cancer to our own origins and the development of life.
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From page 93... ...
IDR Team 8B consisted of a mix of computer scientists, neurologists, plant biologists, physiologists, geneticists, and experts on social insects. Using their multidisciplinary approach, they drew upon concepts from metabolism, computer science, and evolutionary biology to try and explain how multicellular organisms evolved from single cells.
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From page 94... ...
A New Way to Understand Evolutionary Theory: A Computer Science Approach The theory of evolution specifies that evolution is driven by some gain in fitness. The IDR team decided to subsequently explore what this means specifically with respect to the evolution of multicellular organisms.
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From page 95... ...
In the context of biological systems, the team decided to rename these axes as the communication cost, space cost, and time cost required to solve any given biological problem. The team again related this to energy, and in a thought experiment, asked how different single cells could solve a task.
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From page 96... ...
Due to this cooperative approach multicellular organisms can consume food much faster than their single-cell counter parts, but all of this specialization requires an increase in communication between these cell types (high communication cost)
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From page 97... ...
Team 8C initially approached the problem by looking at specific examples in nature where individual cells interact with each other to become a greater functional unit, such as how a biofilm forms, how cancer cells grow into a tumor, or how an ant colony functions. Cells are not autonomous.
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From page 98... ...
While the hardware is fast, it is inflexible, and while the operating system gives rise to a huge diversity of apps, it is hijackable. These patterns of trade-off with speed and flexibility are essential in understanding what drives organismality to emerge from individual cells and how biological noise allows organisms to grow, change, and find niche areas in which to thrive -- whether we want them to or not.
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