Research Article

Spatiotemporal structure of cell fate decisions in murine neural crest

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Science  07 Jun 2019:
Vol. 364, Issue 6444, eaas9536
DOI: 10.1126/science.aas9536

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  • RE: Cell fate decision: adding a formal framework to the descriptive data
    • Sui Huang, Professor, Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle

    This beautiful piece of work describes observations in cell lineage determination in multi-potent neural crest cells. They are consistent with a set of known fundamental principles of cell fate decision that the authors however have barely touched upon in this paper. In a scientific world of increasing fragmentation into sub-disciplines agnostic of each other and of overt emphasis on technology and data collection, it is increasingly common to see the neglect of scholarly consideration of prior art and profound theoretical principles of biology. This paper is victim of this unfortunate trend. So let me complement this impressive set of experimental data with an account of principles of systems biology of cell development. Placed within the context of rigorous theoretical principles of cell fate determination, which could explain every observation made by the authors, the results presented in this paper will shine in a new light, exposing facets of the results that the authors may have not sufficiently considered – at least not in the narrative of this paper.

    What the authors metaphorically describe as “competition” of “genes driving alternative cell fate programs” has long been observed and more rigorously formalized in terms of gene regulatory network dynamics and bifurcation events (in the technical, not colloquial sense): The destabilization of the progenitor attractor state (=gene expression state that is self-stabilizing, explained by the deterministic dynamic...

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    Competing Interests: None declared.

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