Putting Cells into Context

Abstract

Opinion article (excerpt): Cells Live in a Complex World It may sound blatantly obvious, but we have to remind ourselves occasionally that in vivo cells experience an environment with a level of complexity far beyond experimental reach. The developing organism is a highly complex system, where each cell receives a multitude of cues of diverse nature at any given time point. Only the comprehensive integration of all these multivalent interactions determines the actual signaling state and hence the behavior of a cell. The analysis of biological questions is mainly inspired by a reductionist approach adopted from the “exact sciences,” where it has been proven immensely successful. That is, we are used to break down our experimental setup to a manageable number of variables. This of course is inherently contradictory to the complexity of biological systems. While simplification may be the only viable option for the experimenter to dissect biological function down to detail, it has also influenced our perspective toward the experimental systems applied. For example, studies of intracellular signaling pathways are typically performed with cultured cells. Culturing cells in an in vitro setting became a standard model system in biomedical research and with it in cell and developmental biology. These simplified systems allow for the dissection of molecular interactions and pathways and are aimed to deepen and mechanistically understand cellular behavior. While cell cultures have generated a wealth of information into cellular function, the data obtained in vitro frequently are in conflict with in vivo observations. One reason for this discrepancy is that these analyses focus on the cell as a closed functional system, thus conceptually unhinging it from its environment.