Lineage priming and cell type proportioning depends on the interplay between stochastic and deterministic factors (opens in new tab)

Isogenic cells can break symmetry and adopt different fates, even when exposed to a seemingly identical environment. This deeply conserved phenomenon allows unicellular organisms to pre-empt dynamically changing environments and is central to the evolution of multicellularity. It is thought that cells are primed towards different lineages by cell-cell variation, although the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. To address this, we exploit the tractability of the social amoeba Dictyost...