Cellular organization in lab-evolved and extant multicellular species obeys a maximum entropy law

Authors
Day, Thomas C 
Hoehn, Stephanie 
Zamani-Dahaj, Seyed A 
Yanni, David 

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Article
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Abstract

The prevalence of multicellular organisms is due in part to their ability to form complex structures. How cells pack in these structures is a fundamental biophysical issue, underlying their functional properties. However, much remains unknown about how cell packing geometries arise, and how they are affected by random noise during growth - especially absent developmental programs. Here, we quantify the statistics of cellular neighborhoods of two different multicellular eukaryotes: lab-evolved “snowflake” yeast and the green alga Volvox carteri. We find that despite large differences in cellular organization, the free space associated with individual cells in both organisms closely fits a modified gamma distribution, consistent with maximum entropy predictions originally developed for granular materials. This ‘entropic’ cellular packing ensures a degree of predictability despite noise, facilitating parent-offspring fidelity even in the absence of developmental regulation. Together with simulations of diverse growth morphologies, these results suggest that gamma-distributed cell neighborhood sizes are a general feature of multicellularity, arising from conserved statistics of cellular packing.

Publication Date
2022-02-21
Online Publication Date
2022-02-21
Acceptance Date
2022-01-04
Keywords
S. cerevisiae, Snowflake yeast, Volvox, entropy, multicellularity, physics of living systems, Cell Size, Directed Molecular Evolution, Phylogeny, Volvox, Yeasts
Journal Title
eLife
Journal ISSN
2050-084X
2050-084X
Volume Title
11
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M017982/1)
Wellcome Trust (207510/Z/17/Z)