Abstract
How the size and shape of organs are determined is one of the most mysterious questions in developmental biology. Organ size and shape are controlled by tissue growth, which is strongly influenced by local homeostatic cell–cell interactions. Studies during the past several years have shown that cells in multicellular communities compete with each other for their existence; cells with higher fitness (“winners”) survive and eliminate cells with lower fitness (“losers”) by inducing cell death. Accumulating evidence, obtained mainly in Drosophila, has revealed that this cellular natural selection, called “cell competition,” could have an important role in organ size and shape control in normal development as well as in some pathophysiological conditions such as stem cell regulation and cancer development. In this chapter, we discuss recent insights in cell competition. Elucidation of the mechanism by which cell competition is controlled could create a new dimension for understanding the basic principle of multicellular systems.
Keywords
- Cell competition
- Cell death
- Cell–cell interaction
- Tissue growth
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Kunimasa, K., Ohsawa, S., Igaki, T. (2014). Cell Competition: The Struggle for Existence in Multicellular Communities. In: Kondoh, H., Kuroiwa, A. (eds) New Principles in Developmental Processes. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54634-4_3
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