MBI Videos

Understanding Growth Control

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    Arthur Lander

    All multicellular animals develop through a process of controlled proliferation that, in many cases, exhibits impressive speed and extraordinary precision. Organs and tissues often stop growing at sizes that are independent of body size, independent of cellular growth rate, independent of elapsed time, independent of cell size, and nearly independent of initial conditions. Such control involves feedback regulation of cell proliferation, and although some of the molecular signals have been elucidated, the strategies by which feedback achieves the objectives of growing organs and tissues are only beginning to become clear.  Drawing on both modeling and experiments, I will discuss how the coupling of feedback regulation to cell lineage progression provides the degrees of freedom that allow proliferating systems to achieve stability, set-point control, and a remarkable ability to generate controlled final sizes that are larger than the spatial ranges over which feedback signals themselves act.

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