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Self-organization in cell biology: a brief history

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 9, pages 255–262 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Over the past two decades, molecular and cell biologists have made important progress in characterizing the components and compartments of the cell. New visualization methods have also revealed cellular dynamics. This has raised complex issues about the organization principles that underlie the emergence of coherent dynamical cell shapes and functions. Self-organization concepts that were first developed in chemistry and physics and then applied to various morphogenetic problems in biology over the past century are now beginning to be applied to the organization of the living cell.

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Figure 1: Bénard rolls.
Figure 2: Examples of self-organized microtubule patterns and cell shapes.
Figure 3: Examples of self-organized cell-cycle processes.
Figure 4: Self-organized versus templated pattern transmission.

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Acknowledgements

I thank colleagues of the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory for all of the discussions and collective work. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers who helped bring this text to something that looks, I hope, like a balanced and coherent whole. I apologize to all those who have not been cited owing to lack of space or because of my ignorance.

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  1. Eric Karsenti is at the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany. karsenti@embl.de,

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Karsenti, E. Self-organization in cell biology: a brief history. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 9, 255–262 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm2357

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