Control of genes by self-organizing multicellular interaction networks

Multicellular self-organization drives development in biological organisms, yet a comprehensive theory is lacking as basic properties of cells can complicate common approaches. Framing such properties by dynamic graphs led to new theoretical propositions for multicellular self-organization in Escherichia coli . Here, corresponding ideas are developed from biologically-general first principles. The resulting perspective could aid both experimental and computational approaches to multicellular biology as well as efforts to control and engineer it.