Abstract
The temporal coordination of events at cellular and tissue scales is essential for the proper development of organisms, and involves cell-intrinsic processes that can be coupled by local cellular signalling and instructed by global signalling, thereby creating spatial patterns of cellular states that change over time. The timing and structure of these patterns determine how an organism develops. Traditional developmental genetic methods have revealed the complex molecular circuits regulating these processes but are limited in their ability to predict and understand the emergent spatio-temporal dynamics. Increasingly, approaches from physics are now being used to help capture the dynamics of the system by providing simplified, generic descriptions. Combined with advances in imaging and computational power, such approaches aim to provide insight into timing and patterning in developing systems.
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The authors thank A. Pumir, L. Morelli, A. Bercowsky and L. A. Rohde for critical feedback on the manuscript.
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Glossary
- Syncytial
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Describes a cell that is multinucleated.
- Kinematic structures
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Spatial structures that move without transmission of a signal.
- Bistable systems
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Dynamical units that have two stable states, and the simplest dynamical systems that exhibit memory. The genetic toggle switch, in which two genes mutually repress the expression of each other, is an example of a synthetic gene regulatory network that is bistable.
- Excitable medium
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Spatially distributed, coupled excitable units that transmit information from one point to another in the form of travelling pulses.
- Critical point
-
Also known as a bifurcation point. A transition point in parameter values (for example, a degradation rate) where a system moves between qualitatively different states; for example, between oscillatory and non-oscillatory states.
- Phase reduction method
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A mathematical technique that allows the study of limit cycle oscillations (that is, a system with oscillatory dynamics with a fixed amplitude and period that will return to its initial amplitude and period after perturbation, although its phase will drift) by tracking only the time evolution of the phase.
- Heteroclinic cycles
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A dynamical system that transitions between states in repetitive non-periodic cycles, with the period increasing in each successive cycle.
- Asymmetrical cell division
-
A cell division in which a property or set of factors is present in only one of the daughter cells.
- Type IIIo system
-
In the physics of pattern formation, patterns with a tendency towards a spatially uniform state that oscillates in time.
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Negrete, J., Oates, A.C. Towards a physical understanding of developmental patterning. Nat Rev Genet 22, 518–531 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-021-00355-7
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