The extrinsic noise effect on lateral inhibition differentiation waves

TL;DR

This paper investigates how extrinsic noise influences cell fate decisions in lateral inhibition processes, revealing that such noise can lead to stable, patterned cellular states through stochastic modeling of the Notch/Delta pathway.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic cellular automaton model to analyze the impact of extrinsic noise on cell fate patterning in lateral inhibition mechanisms.

Findings

Extrinsic noise induces steady-state furrow patterns.

Patterns exhibit frustrated/transient phenotypic states.

Noise influences the stability and arrangement of cell fates.

Abstract

Multipotent differentiation, where cells adopt one of several cell fates, is a determinate and orchestrated procedure that often incorporates stochastic mechanisms in order to diversify cell types. How these stochastic phenomena interact to govern cell fate are poorly understood. Nonetheless, cell fate decision making procedure is mainly regulated through the activation of differentiation waves and associated signaling pathways. In the current work, we focus on the Notch/Delta signaling pathway which is not only known to trigger such waves but also is used to achieve the principle of lateral inhibition, i.e. a competition for exclusive fates through cross-signaling between neighboring cells. Such a process ensures unambiguous stochastic decisions influenced by intrinsic noise sources, e.g.~as ones found in the regulation of signaling pathways, and extrinsic stochastic fluctuations, attributed to micro-environmental factors. However, the effect of intrinsic and extrinsic noise on cell fate determination is an open problem. Our goal is to elucidate how the induction of extrinsic noise affects cell fate specification in a lateral inhibition mechanism. Using a stochastic Cellular Automaton with continuous state space, we show that extrinsic noise results in the emergence of steady-state furrow patterns of cells in a "frustrated/transient" phenotypic state.