Bioelectricity of non-excitable cells and multicellular pattern memories: Biophysical modeling

Abstract

Cells must coordinate their individual activities toward multicellular goals, which requires efficient information processing mechanisms. Bioelectrical signals encode instructive rules at multiple scales, from the individual cell to the tissue and organ levels, because patterns of cell potentials are locally coupled to transcription and morphogenesis via biochemical downstream processes. We review here biophysical models that suggest how bi-stable and oscillatory bioelectrical memories defined at the single-cell and multicellular scales can constitute pattern memories that are instructive for morphological outcomes. Multicellular aggregates are open to the external microenvironment and typically show spatio-temporal distributions of potassium and calcium ions, neurotransmitters, and specific transcription activators that are correlated with electric potential patterns. This correlation results in patterns composed of dynamic subsystems (modules) with cells that share the same bioelectrical state. The particular integration–segregation topology of the different modules defines a multicellular pattern memory. By acting on these separate modules and their particular integration, pattern memories can be retrieved or externally rewritten, with morphological consequences. Thus, the simulations give further support to recent experimental findings and suggest new opportunities for external actions at the intermediate scale characteristic of endogenous multicellular fields.