Cell Communications among Microorganisms, Plants, and Animals: Origin, Evolution and Interplays

Abstract

Cellular communications play pivotal roles in multi-cellular species, but they do so also in uni-cellular species. Moreover, cells communicate with each other not only within the same individual but also with cells in other individuals belonging to the same or other species. These communications occur between two unicellular species, two multicellular species, or between unicellular and multicellular species. The molecular mechanisms involved exhibit diversity and specificity, but they share common basic features which allow common pathways of communication between different, and sometimes very different species. These interactions have been made possible by the high degree of conservation of the basic molecular mechanisms of interaction of many ligand-receptor pairs in evolutionary remote species. These inter-species cellular communications played crucial roles during Evolution and must have been positively selected, particularly when collectively beneficial in hostile environments. We think that communications between cells did not arise after their emergence but was part of the very nature of first cells. Synchronization of populations of non-living protocells through chemical communications may have been a mandatory step towards their emergence as populations of living cells and explain the large commonality of cell communication mechanisms among microorganisms, plants, and animals.

Pattern Formation in a Spatially-Extended Model of Pacemaker Dynamics in Smooth Muscle Cells

“…We use the shooting method [22] to identify travelling waves and approximate their wave speed. This was achieved by numerically computing solutions to the travelling wave ODEs (17) for initial points perturbed from an equilibrium in a direction tangent to either its stable manifold or unstable manifold. In either case this direction is given by an eigenvector of the Jacobian matrix of (6.3) evaluated at the equilibrium, and a formula for this matrix is provided in Appendix A.…”

“…Communication between cells, primarily excitable and non-excitable cells, helps regulate a wide range of cellular activities, for example, receiving and transmitting of signals in the central nervous system [21,48], the release of hormones into extracellular fluid in endocrine cells [78,67,17], and contractile activity in muscles [61,59,84,10]. Cells are connected to their immediate neighbors through different mechanisms [46,31,81].…”

ROS are evolutionary conserved cell-to-cell signals

“…Two of the most conserved cell-to-cell signaling pathways are paracrine, secretion of signals that are perceived by neighboring cells, and juxtacrine, communication between cells connected via tunneling nano tubes, gap junctions, or plasmodesmata [9][10][11] . Examples of these signaling pathways can be found in archaea, bacteria, unicellular eukaryotes, and multicellular organisms 12 . With the evolution of the vascular and nervous systems, paracrine signaling was extended to endocrine signaling, the release of signals into the bloodstream, and paracrine and juxtacrine signaling began to contribute to long distance signaling as part of electrical and chemical synapses 5,6 .…”

Water is a preservative of microbes

“…Water facilitates transport of substances into and out of the cell, including nutrients and waste products. Microbial cells also compete with each other and communicate with cells of their own kind and other microbes/organisms via soluble and hydrophobic substances released into the aqueous extracellular milieu (Cray et al ., 2013a; Combarnous and Nguyen, 2020). At a biosphere level, water is in constant exchange between the Earth’s biomass and its hydrological cycle, and fluxes of water move between organisms (Nelson et al ., 2020; Pérez‐Ruiz et al ., 2021).…”