How do cell intrinsic cues and external signals interplay with cell motility to affect cellular organization?*

Multicellular bodies are organized into many levels, such as tissues and organs. The manner in which cellular organization is achieved is different in plants and fungi, which have immotile cells, as compared to animals where cells can migrate. In general, cellular organization requires cells to decide whether to divide, differentiate or migrate in response to chemical and mechanical cues. But cells vary in the extent to which they respond to cell intrinsic versus extrinsic cues. For example, early embryonic cells in invertebrates depend completely on cell intrinsic cues, whereas cells in sea urchin blastomeres interact extensively with neighboring cells. Here, we describe a rule based model to investigate how the relative dependence of cellular decisions on intrinsic versus extrinsic cues affects cellular organization, and how is the effect different in organisms with motile versus non-motile cells.