Disorder in cellular packing can alter proliferation dynamics to regulate growth.

Abstract

The mechanisms by which an organ regulates its growth are not yet fully understood, especially when the cells are closely packed as in epithelial tissues. We explain growth arrest as a collective dynamical transition in coupled oscillators on disordered lattices. As the cellular morphologies become homogeneous over the course of development, the signals induced by cell-cell contact increase beyond a critical value that triggers coordinated cessation of the cell-cycle oscillators driving cell division. Thus, control of cell proliferation is causally related to the geometry of cellular packing.