Satoru Tsugawa: From Stochastic Cell Behavior to Reproducible Shapes: Order from Disorder

Abstract: In developmental biology, a longstanding question has been how organs reach their reproducible shapes. This problem has been difficult because the organisms in nature often exhibit stochastic/randomized processes in gene expression, cell size and cell growth at the cellular level. We challenged the problem with an interdisciplinary team including plant biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians and statisticians. The surprising and counterintuitive result was that the microscopic randomness is required to reach the reproducible size/shape; the order is originated (or emerged) from disorder.