Description
A dataset related to a manuscript "Cellular logics bringing symmetry breaking in spiral nucleation revealed by trans-scale imaging"
Abstract
Rotating spirals are a typical dynamic in signal relaying systems and are observed in neuronal seizures and cardiac fibrillations. Although spiral waves are inducible under artificial conditions, their mechanisms of spontaneous formation have long been elusive. Here, we investigated the development of a social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, which self-organizes spiral waves of intercellular communication from an a non-signaling state. Trans-scale imaging of signaling dynamics in ~130,000 cells identified features essential for the initiation, selection, and maintenance of a spiral wave, for which so-called reentry, a classical hypothesis for cardiac fibrillation, plays a role. Experimental and computational analysis revealed that wave-scale heterogeneity of signaling ability arising from cell-scale heterogeneity collectively self-organizes reentrant circuits, through which unidirectional wave propagation is initiated by a few pacemaker cells.