Distribution of differentiated cells in a cell sheet under the lateral inhibition rule of differentiation

✍ Scribed by Masaharu Tanemura; Hisao Honda; Akihiro Yoshida

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 688 KB
• Volume: 153
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1016/s0022-5193(05)80571-5

✦ Synopsis

The distribution of differentiated cells among undifferentiated cells was investigated assuming the lateral inhibition hypothesis of cell differentiation. Computer simulations were undertaken in a planar array of polygonal domains in which homogeneous polygons are all competent to differentiate, and immediate neighbors of a differentiated polygon exert lateral inhibition of differentiation. The simulation showed that the average cell number ratio of undifferentiated to differentiated cells is 3.32, when picking a polygon for differentiation at random from a hexagonal pattern. The ratio decreased when using disturbed polygonal patterns instead of a hexagonal one. A non-random sequence of picking polygons also varied cell number ratio values. Our results show that if there is no control system as a whole, the lateral inhibition rule produced cell distributions whose cell number ratio is around 3. Cell number ratios are discussed in regard to observations of epithelial cell sheets.