---
APC_amount: 2570,79 EUR
OA_place: publisher
OA_type: hybrid
_id: '17123'
abstract:
- lang: eng
text: A key feature of many developmental systems is their ability to self-organize
spatial patterns of functionally distinct cell fates. To ensure proper biological
function, such patterns must be established reproducibly, by controlling and even
harnessing intrinsic and extrinsic fluctuations. While the relevant molecular
processes are increasingly well understood, we lack a principled framework to
quantify the performance of such stochastic self-organizing systems. To that end,
we introduce an information-theoretic measure for self-organized fate specification
during embryonic development. We show that the proposed measure assesses the total
information content of fate patterns and decomposes it into interpretable contributions
corresponding to the positional and correlational information. By optimizing the
proposed measure, our framework provides a normative theory for developmental
circuits, which we demonstrate on lateral inhibition, cell type proportioning,
and reaction–diffusion models of self-organization. This paves a way toward a
classification of developmental systems based on a common information-theoretic
language, thereby organizing the zoo of implicated chemical and mechanical signaling
processes.
acknowledgement: We thank Wiktor Młynarski, Juraj Majek, Michal Hledík, Fridtjof Brauns,
Nikolas Claussen, Benjamin Zoller, Erwin Frey, Thomas Gregor, and Edouard Hannezo
for inspiring discussions. D.B.B. was supported by the NOMIS foundation as a NOMIS
Fellow and by an European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Postdoctoral Fellowship
(ALTF 343-2022). This research was performed in part at the Aspen Center for Physics,
which is supported by NSF Grant No. PHY-1607611, and Kavli Institute for Theoretical
Physics (KITP) Santa Barbara, supported by NSF Grant No. PHY-1748958 and the Gordon
and Betty Moore Foundation Grant No. 2919.02.
article_number: e2322326121
article_processing_charge: Yes (in subscription journal)
article_type: original
author:
- first_name: David
full_name: Brückner, David
id: e1e86031-6537-11eb-953a-f7ab92be508d
last_name: Brückner
orcid: 0000-0001-7205-2975
- first_name: Gašper
full_name: Tkačik, Gašper
id: 3D494DCA-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
last_name: Tkačik
orcid: 0000-0002-6699-1455
citation:
ama: Brückner D, Tkačik G. Information content and optimization of self-organized
developmental systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America. 2024;121(23). doi:10.1073/pnas.2322326121
apa: Brückner, D., & Tkačik, G. (2024). Information content and optimization
of self-organized developmental systems. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America. National Academy of Sciences.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322326121
chicago: Brückner, David, and Gašper Tkačik. “Information Content and Optimization
of Self-Organized Developmental Systems.” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America. National Academy of Sciences,
2024. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322326121.
ieee: D. Brückner and G. Tkačik, “Information content and optimization of self-organized
developmental systems,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America, vol. 121, no. 23. National Academy of Sciences,
2024.
ista: Brückner D, Tkačik G. 2024. Information content and optimization of self-organized
developmental systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America. 121(23), e2322326121.
mla: Brückner, David, and Gašper Tkačik. “Information Content and Optimization of
Self-Organized Developmental Systems.” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 121, no. 23, e2322326121,
National Academy of Sciences, 2024, doi:10.1073/pnas.2322326121.
short: D. Brückner, G. Tkačik, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America 121 (2024).
corr_author: '1'
date_created: 2024-06-09T22:01:02Z
date_published: 2024-06-04T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2025-09-08T07:51:01Z
day: '04'
ddc:
- '570'
department:
- _id: EdHa
- _id: GaTk
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2322326121
external_id:
isi:
- '001244835000006'
pmid:
- '38819997'
file:
- access_level: open_access
checksum: 59797a75db7beb3721ed7a4d14c241f9
content_type: application/pdf
creator: dernst
date_created: 2024-06-10T10:27:37Z
date_updated: 2024-06-10T10:27:37Z
file_id: '17130'
file_name: 2024_PNAS_Brueckner.pdf
file_size: 12329234
relation: main_file
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file_date_updated: 2024-06-10T10:27:37Z
has_accepted_license: '1'
intvolume: ' 121'
isi: 1
issue: '23'
language:
- iso: eng
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
month: '06'
oa: 1
oa_version: Published Version
pmid: 1
project:
- _id: 34e2a5b5-11ca-11ed-8bc3-b2265616ef0b
grant_number: ALTF 343-2022
name: A mechano-chemical theory for stem cell fate decisions in organoid development
publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America
publication_identifier:
eissn:
- 1091-6490
issn:
- 0027-8424
publication_status: published
publisher: National Academy of Sciences
quality_controlled: '1'
related_material:
link:
- relation: software
url: https://github.com/dbrueckner/SelforgInformation
- description: News on the ISTA website
relation: press_release
url: https://ista.ac.at/en/news/the-embryo-assembles-itself/
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: Information content and optimization of self-organized developmental systems
tmp:
image: /images/cc_by_nc_nd.png
legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode
name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
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short: CC BY-NC-ND (4.0)
type: journal_article
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volume: 121
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...