9 June 2023
Allyson Sgro
HHMI Janelia Research Campus
Groups of cells of all kinds work together and make decisions to form patterns and generate large-scale behaviors. These behaviors are coordinated via information cells can sense locally, and this information is shaped by the complex and heterogeneous environments the cells exist in. To better understand how population-scale coordination is shaped by these local environments and what properties of single cells allow for robust coordination of large-scale behaviors, we focus on a cellular slime mold, Dictyostelium discoideum, which during starvation uses a biochemical environmental signal to coordinate aggregation into multicellular groups for continued survival. Existing models capture how on flat, homogenous substrates this signal relay produces emergent, population-wide spiral waves that lead cells to aggregate and develop into a fruiting body structure. However, this behavior originally evolved in complex, three dimensional environments like soil. We have designed a naturalistic environmental soil model system where we can quantify how cellular changes such as number, density, and genotype, as well as environmental features such as particle size perturb signaling and collective outcomes. Our current findings suggest that the single-cell and population-wide signaling behaviors that coordinate development are robust in highly complex, three-dimensional environments, but that there are also other important cellular properties we do not yet fully understand required for success in nature.