Stem cell regeneration is a vital biological process in self-renewing tissues, governing development and tissue homeostasis. Gene regulatory network dynamics are pivotal in controlling stem cell regeneration and cell type transitions. However, integrating the quantitative dynamics of gene regulatory networks at the single-cell level with stem cell regeneration at the population level poses significant challenges. This study presents a computational framework connecting gene regulatory network dynamics with stem cell regeneration through a data-driven formulation of the inheritance function. The inheritance function captures epigenetic state transitions during cell division in heterogeneous stem cell populations. Our scheme allows the derivation of the inheritance function based on a hybrid model of cross-cell-cycle gene regulation network dynamics. The proposed scheme enables us to derive the inheritance function based on the hybrid model of cross-cell-cycle gene regulation network dynamics. By explicitly incorporating gene regulatory network structure, it replicates cross-cell-cycling gene regulation dynamics through individual-cell-based modeling. The numerical scheme holds the p
Stem cell regeneration is a crucial biological process for most self-renewing tissues during the development and maintenance of tissue homeostasis. In developing the mathematical models of stem cell regeneration and tissue development, cell division is the core process connecting different scale biological processes and leading to changes in cell population number and the epigenetic state of cells. This chapter focuses on the primary strategies for modeling cell division in biological systems. The Lagrange coordinate modeling approach considers gene network dynamics within each cell and random changes in cell states and model parameters during cell division. In contrast, the Euler coordinate modeling approach formulates the evolution of cell population numbers with the same epigenetic state via a differential-integral equation. These strategies focus on different scale dynamics, respectively, and result in two methods of modeling Waddington's epigenetic landscape: the Fokker-Planck equation and the differential-integral equation approaches. The differential-integral equation approach formulates the evolution of cell population density based on simple assumptions in cell proliferati
Cell type annotation is a key task in analyzing the heterogeneity of single-cell RNA sequencing data. Although recent foundation models automate this process, they typically annotate cells independently, without considering batch-level cellular context or providing explanatory reasoning. In contrast, human experts often annotate distinct cell types for different cell clusters based on their domain knowledge. To mimic this workflow, we introduce the CellPuzzles task, where the objective is to assign unique cell types to a batch of cells. This benchmark spans diverse tissues, diseases, and donor conditions, and requires reasoning across the batch-level cellular context to ensure label uniqueness. We find that off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) struggle on CellPuzzles, with the best baseline (OpenAI's o1) achieving only 19.0% batch-level accuracy. To fill this gap, we propose Cell-o1, a 7B LLM trained via supervised fine-tuning on distilled reasoning traces, followed by reinforcement learning with batch-level rewards. Cell-o1 achieves state-of-the-art performance, outperforming o1 by over 73% and generalizing well across contexts. Further analysis of training dynamics and reas
The crawling motility of many eukaryotic cells is driven by filamentous actin (F-actin), and regulated by a network of signaling proteins and lipids (including small GTPases). The tangle of positive and negative feedback loops gives rise to various experimentally observed dynamic patterns (``actin waves''). Here we consider a recent prototypical model for actin waves in which F-actin exerts negative feedback onto a GTPase. Guided by recent numerical PDE bifurcation analysis in Hughes (2025) and Hughes et al (2026), we explore cell shapes and motility associated with polar, oscillatory, and traveling waves solutions of a mass-conserved partial differential equation (PDE) model. We use Morpheus (cellular Potts) simulations to investigate the implications of such regimes of behavior on the shapes and motion of cells, and on transitions between modes of behavior. The model demonstrates various cell states, including resting (spatially uniform GTPase), polar cells (static ``zones'' of GTPase), and traveling waves along the cell edge. In some parameter regimes, such states can coexist, so that cells can transition from one behavior to another in response to noisy stimuli.
Cell-cell communication is essential for tissue development, regeneration and function, and its disruption can lead to diseases and developmental abnormalities. The revolution of single-cell genomics technologies offers unprecedented insights into cellular identities, opening new avenues to resolve the intricate cellular interactions present in tissue niches. CellPhoneDB is a bioinformatics toolkit designed to infer cell-cell communication by combining a curated repository of bona fide ligand-receptor interactions with a set of computational and statistical methods to integrate them with single-cell genomics data. Importantly, CellPhoneDB captures the multimeric nature of molecular complexes, thus representing cell-cell communication biology faithfully. Here we present CellPhoneDB v5, an updated version of the tool, which offers several new features. Firstly, the repository has been expanded by one-third with the addition of new interactions. These encompass interactions mediated by non-protein ligands such as endocrine hormones and GPCR ligands. Secondly, it includes a differentially expression-based methodology for more tailored interaction queries. Thirdly, it incorporates novel
Regulation of cell proliferation is a crucial aspect of tissue development and homeostasis and plays a major role in morphogenesis, wound healing, and tumor invasion. A phenomenon of such regulation is contact inhibition, which describes the dramatic slowing of proliferation, cell migration and individual cell growth when multiple cells are in contact with each other. While many physiological, molecular and genetic factors are known, the mechanism of contact inhibition is still not fully understood. In particular, the relevance of cellular signaling due to interfacial contact for contact inhibition is still debated. Cellular automata (CA) have been employed in the past as numerically efficient mathematical models to study the dynamics of cell ensembles, but they are not suitable to explore the origins of contact inhibition as such agent-based models assume fixed cell sizes. We develop a minimal, data-driven model to simulate the dynamics of planar cell cultures by extending a probabilistic CA to incorporate size changes of individual cells during growth and cell division. We successfully apply this model to previous in-vitro experiments on contact inhibition in epithelial tissue: A
We study the dynamics of a seeding experiment where a fibrous scaffold material is colonized by two types of cell populations. The specific application that we have in mind is related to the idea of meniscus tissue regeneration. In order to support the development of a promising replacement material, we discuss certain rate equations for the densities of human mesenchymal stem cells and chondrocytes and for the production of collagen-containing extracellular matrix. For qualitative studies, we start with a system of ordinary differential equations and refine then the model to include spatial effects of the underlying nonwoven scaffold structure. Numerical experiments as well as a complete set of parameters for future benchmarking are provided.
Cancer stem cells are controlled by developmental networks that are often topologically indistinguishable from normal, healthy stem cells. The question is why cancer stem cells can be both phenotypically distinct and have morphological effects so different from normal stem cells. The difference between cancer stem cells and normal stem cells lies not in differences their network architecture, but rather in the spatial-temporal locality of their activation in the genome and the resulting expression in the body. The metastatic potential cancer stem cells is not based primarily on their network divergence from normal stem cells, but on non-network based genetic changes that enable the evolution of gene-based phenotypic properties of the cell that permit its escape and travel to other parts of the body. Stem cell network theory allows the precise prediction of stem cell behavioral dynamics and a mathematical description of stem cell proliferation for both normal and cancer stem cells. It indicates that the best therapeutic approach is to tackle the highest order stem cells first, otherwise spontaneous remission of so called cured cancers will always be a danger. Stem cell networks poin
Training datasets have tremendous proprietary value and are vulnerable to unauthorized copying. Existing defenses mainly focus on tracking individual data points, but pay little attention to the threat of dataset regeneration. Through a measurement study of public tumor datasets, we identify substantial real-world partial-dataset replication, raising concerns about potential license noncompliance. To counter the challenge of tracking previously unknown adversarial regeneration, our key insight is that regeneration that preserves model utility inevitably preserves measurable signals across multiple feature scales. We categorize these dataset features into sample-, set-, and distribution-level features and design four similarity metrics to accurately identify regeneration. Based on these metrics, we develop DIPBox, which to our knowledge is the first testing framework that tracks regeneration suspects via multi-scale similarity testing across a spectrum of defender access settings, from limited to full information. We further provide a learning-theoretic analysis that justifies these multi-scale metrics and formalizes an inherent utility--divergence trade-off, implying fundamental li
Stem cell heterogeneity is essential for the homeostasis in tissue development. This paper established a general formulation for understanding the dynamics of stem cell regeneration with cell heterogeneity and random transitions of epigenetic states. The model generalizes the classical G0 cell cycle model, and incorporates the epigenetic states of stem cells that are represented by a continuous multidimensional variable and the kinetic rates of cell behaviors, including proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis, that are dependent on their epigenetic states. Moreover, the random transition of epigenetic states is represented by an inheritance probability that can be described as a conditional beta distribution. This model can be extended to investigate gene mutation-induced tumor development. The proposed formula is a generalized formula that helps us to understand various dynamic processes of stem cell regeneration, including tissue development, degeneration, and abnormal growth.
Iron accumulates in the neural tissue during peripheral nerve degeneration. Some studies have already been suggested that iron facilitates Wallerian degeneration (WD) events such as Schwann cell de-differentiation. On the other hand, intracellular iron levels remain elevated during nerve regeneration and gradually decrease. Iron enhances Schwann cell differentiation and axonal outgrowth. Therefore, there seems to be a paradox in the role of iron during nerve degeneration and regeneration. We explain this contradiction by suggesting that the increase in intracellular iron concentration during peripheral nerve degeneration is likely to prepare neural cells for the initiation of regeneration. Changes in iron levels are the result of changes in the expression of iron homeostasis proteins. In this review, we will first discuss the changes in the iron/iron homeostasis protein levels during peripheral nerve degeneration and regeneration and then explain how iron is related to nerve regeneration. This data may help better understand the mechanisms of peripheral nerve repair and find a solution to prevent or slow the progression of peripheral neuropathies.
Partial hepatectomy (PHx) is a surgical intervention where a part of the liver is removed. Due to its extraordinary capacity to regenerate, the liver is able to regenerate about two-thirds of its mass within a few weeks. Nevertheless, in some patients regeneration fails. Understanding the principles and limitations underlying regeneration may permit to control this process and prospectively improve the regeneration. Here, we established a simulation model to mimic the process of regeneration in the liver lobe of a mouse. This model represents each hepatocyte individually and builds upon a previous computational model of regeneration of drug induced damage in a single liver lobule. The present study simulates entire liver lobes that consist of hundreds to thousands of lobules. It accounts for biomechanical control of cell cycle progression (Biomechanical Growth Control), which has not been considered in that previous work. The model reproduced the available experimental observations only if BGC was taken into account. Interestingly, the model predicted that BGC minimizes the number of proliferating neighbor cells of a proliferating cell resulting in a checkerboard-like proliferation
We define a model for random (abstract) cell complexes (CCs), similiar to the well-known Erdős-Rényi model for graphs and its extensions for simplicial complexes. To build a random cell complex, we first draw from an Erdős-Rényi graph, and consecutively augment the graph with cells for each dimension with a specified probability. As the number of possible cells increases combinatorially -- e.g., 2-cells can be represented as cycles, or permutations -- we derive an approximate sampling algorithm for this model limited to two-dimensional abstract cell complexes. As a basis for this algorithm, we first introduce a spanning-tree-based method that samples simple cycles and allows the efficient approximation of various properties, most notably the probability of occurence of a given cycle. This approximation is of independent interest as it enables the approximation of a wide variety of cycle-related graph statistics using importance sampling. We use this to approximate the number of cycles of a given length on a graph, allowing us to calculate the sampling probability to arrive at a desired expected number of sampled 2-cells. The probability approximation also trivially leads to a sampl
The transition from single-cell to multicellular behavior is important in early development but rarely studied. The starvation-induced aggregation of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum into a multicellular slug is known to result from single-cell chemotaxis towards emitted pulses of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). However, how exactly do transient short-range chemical gradients lead to coherent collective movement at a macroscopic scale? Here, we use a multiscale model verified by quantitative microscopy to describe wide-ranging behaviors from chemotaxis and excitability of individual cells to aggregation of thousands of cells. To better understand the mechanism of long-range cell-cell communication and hence aggregation, we analyze cell-cell correlations, showing evidence for self-organization at the onset of aggregation (as opposed to following a leader cell). Surprisingly, cell collectives, despite their finite size, show features of criticality known from phase transitions in physical systems. Application of external cAMP perturbations in our simulations near the sensitive critical point allows steering cells into early aggregation and towards certain locations b
Development combines three basic processes asymmetric --- cell division, signaling and gene regulation --- in a multitude of ways to create an overwhelming diversity of multicellular life-forms. Here, we attempt to chart this diversity using a generative model. We sample millions of biologically feasible developmental schemes, allowing us to comment on the statistical properties of cell-differentiation trajectories they produce. Our results indicate that, in contrast to common views, cell-type lineage graphs are unlikely to be tree-like. Instead, they are more likely to be directed acyclic graphs, with multiple lineages converging on the same terminal cell-type. Additionally, in line with the hypothesis that whole body regeneration is an epiphenomenon of development, a majority of the `organism' generated by our model can regenerate using pluripotent cells. The generative framework is modular and flexible, and can be adapted to test additional hypotheses about general features of development.
We generated a computational approach to analyze the biomechanics of epithelial cell aggregates, either island or stripes or entire monolayers, that combines both vertex and contact-inhibition-of-locomotion models to include both cell-cell and cell-substrate adhesion. Examination of the distribution of cell protrusions (adhesion to the substrate) in the model predicted high order profiles of cell organization that agree with those previously seen experimentally. Cells acquired an asymmetric distribution of basal protrusions, traction forces and apical aspect ratios that decreased when moving from the edge to the island center. Our in silico analysis also showed that tension on cell-cell junctions and apical stress is not homogeneous across the island. Instead, these parameters are higher at the island center and scales up with island size, which we confirmed experimentally using laser ablation assays and immunofluorescence. Without formally being a 3-dimensional model, our approach has the minimal elements necessary to reproduce the distribution of cellular forces and mechanical crosstalk as well as distribution of principal stress in cells within epithelial cell aggregates. By mak
Multiplexed immuno-fluorescence tissue imaging, allowing simultaneous detection of molecular properties of cells, is an essential tool for characterizing the complex cellular mechanisms in translational research and clinical practice. New image analysis approaches are needed because tissue section stained with a mixture of protein, DNA and RNA biomarkers are introducing various complexities, including spurious edges due to fluorescent staining artifacts between touching or overlapping cells. We have developed the RRScell method harnessing the stochastic random-reaction-seed (RRS) algorithm and deep neural learning U-net to extract single-cell resolution profiling-map of gene expression over a million cells tissue section accurately and automatically. Furthermore, with the use of manifold learning technique UMAP for cell phenotype cluster analysis, the AI-driven RRScell has equipped with a marker-based image cytometry analysis tool (markerUMAP) in quantifying spatial distribution of cell phenotypes from tissue images with a mixture of biomarkers. The results achieved in this study suggest that RRScell provides a robust enough way for extracting cytometric single cell morphology as w
Myxococcus xanthus cells self-organize into aligned groups, clusters, at various stages of their lifecycle. Formation of these clusters is crucial for the complex dynamic multi-cellular behavior of these bacteria. However, the mechanism underlying the cell alignment and clustering is not fully understood. Motivated by studies of clustering in self-propelled rods, we hypothesized that M. xanthus cells can align and form clusters through pure mechanical interactions among cells and between cells and substrate. We test this hypothesis using an agent-based simulation framework in which each agent is based on the biophysical model of an individual M. xanthus cell. We show that model agents, under realistic cell flexibility values, can align and form cell clusters but only when periodic reversals of cell directions are suppressed. However, by extending our model to introduce the observed ability of cells to deposit and follow slime trails, we show that effective trail-following leads to clusters in reversing cells. Furthermore, we conclude that mechanical cell alignment combined with slime-trail-following is sufficient to explain the distinct clustering behaviors observed for wild-type a
Recent developments have renewed the demand for solar cells with increased tolerance to radiation damage. To investigate the specific irradiation damage of 1 MeV electron irradiation in GaInAsP lattice matched to InP for varying In and P contents, a simulation based analysis is employed: by fitting the quantum efficiency and open-circuit voltage simultaneously before and after irradiation, the induced changes in lifetime are detected. Furthermore, the reduction of irradiation damage during regeneration under typical satellite operating conditions for GEO missions (60°C and AM0 illumination) is investigated. A clear decrease of the radiation damage is observed after post irradiation regeneration. This regeneration effect is stronger for increasing InP-fraction. It is demonstrated that the irradiation induced defect recombination coefficient for irradiation with 1 MeV electrons after regeneration for 216 hours can be described with a linear function of InP-fraction between 1*10$^{-5}$ cm$^2$/s for GaAs and 7*10$^{-7}$ cm$^2$/s for InP. The results show that GaInAsP is a promising material for radiation hard space solar cells.
Organisms across all domains of life regulate the size of their cells. However, the means by which this is done is poorly understood. We study two abstracted "molecular" models for size regulation: inhibitor dilution and initiator accumulation. We apply the models to two settings: bacteria like Escherichia coli, that grow fully before they set a division plane and divide into two equally sized cells, and cells that form a bud early in the cell division cycle, confine new growth to that bud, and divide at the connection between that bud and the mother cell, like the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In budding cells, delaying cell division until buds reach the same size as their mother leads to very weak size control, with average cell size and standard deviation of cell size increasing over time and saturating up to 100-fold higher than those values for cells that divide when the bud is still substantially smaller than its mother. In budding yeast, both inhibitor dilution or initiator accumulation models are consistent with the observation that the daughters of diploid cells add a constant volume before they divide. This adder behavior has also been observed in bacteria. We f