Patrick McMillen
Patrick McMillen is an author on work from Michael Levin's group about how cells coordinate over distance. A 2021 review covered long-range signalling before specialised organs form1. A 2024 paper with Levin framed biology through collective intelligence4. A 2024 embryo study reported that groups of embryos protect one another from a teratogen6.
- In the library
- 3 works, named in 2 passages elsewhere
Long-range cell signalling
In the 2021 review with Oudin, Levin and Payne, the authors posed a problem: cells must integrate over distances far larger than their neighbourhood, and the mechanisms acting before nerves, blood vessels and lymphatics form had been an open question1. They described gap junctions linking cells of different charge. These can set up electric fields that move signals such as serotonin or calcium between cells2. They also listed long-range bioelectric effects whose mechanisms were still unknown, including the distant normalisation of tumours3.
Collective intelligence across scales
In the 2024 paper with Levin, brains are treated as one point on a spectrum of collectives. The authors suggest cognitive science can be read as the study of the collective intelligence of neurons and other cell types4. They also describe cancer as a failure of collective behaviour. Cells cut off from the tissue's information structure revert to an ancient, unicellular phenotype5. Bioelectric cues are presented as a recent focus for understanding how such failures arise.
Embryo group effects
McMillen is one of eleven authors of the 2024 study of embryos exposed to a teratogen. It found that larger groups were protected against thioridazine-induced death and craniofacial defects, and that faster drug degradation in larger cohorts did not explain this. The authors named the effect Cross-Embryo Morphogenetic Assistance6. Their model assumed that an embryo cannot sense the internal states of its neighbours7. Separately, Manicka and Levin thanked McMillen for comments on a draft of their 2022 paper8.
Until recently, however, the mechanisms through which individual cells integrate over long distances, before these specialized communication channels have formed, have remained an open mystery for developmental biologists.
McMillen P, Oudin MJ, Levin M, Payne SL, 2021 · Beyond Neurons: Long Distance Communication in Development and Cancer · open at passage 4Differentially charged cells connected by gap junctions can establish stable electric fields, which in turn can drive inter-cellular electrophoresis of charged chemical messengers like serotonin or calcium
McMillen P, Oudin MJ, Levin M, Payne SL, 2021 · Beyond Neurons: Long Distance Communication in Development and Cancer · open at passage 12Moreover, there remain several examples of long-range bioelectric phenomena, such as the long-distance normalization of tumors (Chernet and Levin, 2014)
McMillen P, Oudin MJ, Levin M, Payne SL, 2021 · Beyond Neurons: Long Distance Communication in Development and Cancer · open at passage 13Thus, one way to view cognitive science is as the study of the collective Intelligence of neurons and other cell types.
McMillen P, Levin M, 2024 · Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across… · open at passage 4When cells become isolated from the information structure of the tissue, they revert back to an ancient, unicellular transcriptional108 and behavioral phenotype109,110.
McMillen P, Levin M, 2024 · Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across… · open at passage 12We conclude that larger group size confers a significant protective effect against both thioridazine-induced death and craniofacial defects in a manner that cannot be explained by increased drug degradation in larger cohorts.
Tung A, Sperry MM, Clawson W, Pavuluri A, Bulatao S, Yue M…, 2024 · Embryos assist morphogenesis of others through calcium and ATP signaling… · open at passage 12Importantly, the model is designed to ensure that an embryo has no ‘knowledge’ of its neighbors’ internal processes
Tung A, Sperry MM, Clawson W, Pavuluri A, Bulatao S, Yue M…, 2024 · Embryos assist morphogenesis of others through calcium and ATP signaling… · open at passage 29We thank Vaibhav Pai and Patrick McMillen for providing helpful comments on a draft of the manuscript.
Manicka S, Levin M, 2022 · Minimal Developmental Computation: A Causal Network Approach to Understand… · open at passage 45
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