On Compatible Condition for Morphogenetic Diversity and Recursive Production of Multicellular Organisms

Abstract

The development of a multicellular organism is a dynamic process. With the increase of the cell number, starting from one or a few cells, cells are differentiated with different compositions. These differet types of cells form an ordered pattern. It is rather surprising that differentiation in cell types and formation of controlled patterns are compatible, because the former gives morphogenetic diversification whereas the latter implies recursive production of a cell ensemble, reducing individual differences. We studied this problem by taking a simple cell model with intracellular reaction dynamics of chemical concentrations, cell-cell interactions, and increase in cell numbers. We show that, by starting from an initial object consisting of both the cell type with diverse chemicals and the differentiated cell type, the recursive production of a multicellular organism with morphogenetic diversity is possible.