ArticleeLife2023
Physical basis of the cell size scaling laws.
Article in eLife, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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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
38 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 74 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence and clinical characterisation of thyroid dysfunction in COPD: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Macromolecular Crowding in Cytoplasm and Cellular Organelles.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2025Pooled it
- The responsive nucleus: morphological signatures of cellular state.Nucleus (Austin, Tex.) · 2026Review
- Article
- Bacterial growth under confinement requires transcriptional adaptation to resist turgor pressure build-up.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A transient RNP compartment boosts translation and growth of mammalian oocytes.Science advances · 2026Article
- Chromatin decompaction within the nucleus increases plasma membrane tension promoting NETosis execution, independently of transcription.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Nuclear size and physical properties of the nucleoplasm are determined by colloid osmotic pressure at the nuclear envelope.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Dual role of the receptor kinase FERONIA in regulating tissue mechanics and growth.Science advances · 2026Article
- Getting nuclear size just right - emerging mechanisms regulating nuclear scaling and morphology.Journal of cell science · 2026Review
- Organelle scaling over a 100-fold cell size range.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Inertial sensing of water content in tumor spheroids.Science advances · 2026Article
- From stress to strength: mechanotransducing poly(aneu)ploidy into a community-level advantage in cancer.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2026Review
- Pore size dynamics control complex volume swelling in pyroptosis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Optical Measurement of the Mass Density of Biological Samples.ACS photonics · 2025Article
- Amino acids bind to phase-separating proteins and modulate biomolecular condensate stability and dynamics.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Cells prioritize the regulation of cell mass density.Science advances · 2025Article
- Conserved nucleocytoplasmic density homeostasis drives cellular organization across eukaryotes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Design principles and feedback mechanisms in organelle size control.Current opinion in cell biology · 2025Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cellular growth is the result of passive physical constraints and active biological processes. Their interplay leads to the appearance of robust and ubiquitous scaling laws relating linearly cell size, dry mass, and nuclear size. Despite accumulating experimental evidence, their origin is still unclear. Here, we show that these laws can be explained quantitatively by a single model of size regulation based on three simple, yet generic, physical constraints defining altogether the Pump-Leak model. Based on quantitative estimates, we clearly map the Pump-Leak model coarse-grained parameters with the dominant cellular components. We propose that dry mass density homeostasis arises from the scaling between proteins and small osmolytes, mainly amino acids and ions. Our model predicts this scaling to naturally fail, both at senescence when DNA and RNAs are saturated by RNA polymerases and ribosomes, respectively, and at mitotic entry due to the counterion release following histone tail modifications. Based on the same physical laws, we further show that nuclear scaling results from a osmotic balance at the nuclear envelope and a large pool of metabolites, which dilutes chromatin counterions that do not scale during growth.
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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.