ArticleNature chemical biology2023
Macroscopic quorum sensing sustains differentiating embryonic stem cells.
Article in Nature chemical biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Synthetic circuits for cell ratio control.Nature · 2026Article
- Discreteness, Computation, and Rules of Life for Self-Organization Dynamics Beyond Equilibrium.Newton ((New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Keeping up with the neighbours: local synchronisation of cell fate decisions during development.EMBO reports · 2026Review
- AI-powered simulation-based inference of a genuinely spatial-stochastic gene regulation model of early mouse embryogenesis.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Microbial life in slow and stopped lanes.Trends in microbiology · 2024Review
- The salt-and-pepper pattern in mouse blastocysts is compatible with signaling beyond the nearest neighbors.iScience · 2023Article
- Voices carry.Nature chemical biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Cells can secrete molecules that help each other's replication. In cell cultures, chemical signals might diffuse only within a cell colony or between colonies. A chemical signal's interaction length-how far apart interacting cells are-is often assumed to be some value without rigorous justifications because molecules' invisible paths and complex multicellular geometries pose challenges. Here we present an approach, combining mathematical models and experiments, for determining a chemical signal's interaction length. With murine embryonic stem (ES) cells as a testbed, we found that differentiating ES cells secrete FGF4, among others, to communicate over many millimeters in cell culture dishes and, thereby, form a spatially extended, macroscopic entity that grows only if its centimeter-scale population density is above a threshold value. With this 'macroscopic quorum sensing', an isolated macroscopic, but not isolated microscopic, colony can survive differentiation. Our integrated approach can determine chemical signals' interaction lengths in generic multicellular communities.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.