Biological Control

A self organizing microcapillary network Learn more...

How is it that thousands of genes work together inside a stem cell to make it grow sometimes, differentiate into a specialized cell type, such as liver or bone, other times, and to commit suicide when conditions turn bad? How do the cells of a blood vessel know how to collaborate to form a new functional capillary network to bypass an infarct and reoxygenate the heart muscle in a patient with a myocardial infarction? Is this any different than how ants know to work together to gather bits of food and bring them home? Somehow the individual genes, cells, and insects "know" what they are supposed to do without receiving marching orders from a central authority.

This 'self organizing' behavior results emerges from collective interactions among many different components, and it is a fundamental property of living systems. Genes modulate each other's activities within dynamic regulatory circuits that switch on or off in response to hormones and chemicals in their environment. Cells in the embryo communicate with each other and make group decisions as whether to form into liver or a lung, and they robustly build the same body plan time and again. Cells sense their position and change their contrality by sensing organ stretching, and nerve cells decide whether or not to fire in response to touch or vibration depending on time-varying electrical signals from others cells in the same neural network. Because nature builds hierarchically, dynamic changes in structure and function must be seamlessly coordinated at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, and organism levels, whereas in aging the fidelity of this coordination progressively decays.

Schematic representation of how cells switch between different fates in an all-or-none manner based on collective gene behaviors. Learn more...

Institute scientists have discovered that our heart rate, breathing rate, walking movements, and other natural body rhythms, which are controlled by this underlying web of dynamic interactions, provide an easily accessible readout of health and disease. A deeper understanding of this form of biological control also will lead to development of novel strategies for reprogramming cell behavior, rebooting diseased tissues, and programming robots to build and control through collective behavior like living cells.