A topoietic model of collective morphogenesis and compartmentalization

Increasing group size in Xenopus laevis embryos under teratogenic stress strengthens a diffusing extracellular ATP/adenosine field, raising survival rescue up to 92% across N=1–306.

• Why it matters: The work addresses how collective morphogenesis and compartmentalization emerge under stress, and why larger groups show cross-embryo morphogenetic assistance (CEMA) without needing individual-level engineering.
• What they did: The authors propose topoiesis, where a constitutively secreted stress signal diffuses and decays, and they use a biophysically calibrated minimal model to match rescue rates across six group sizes (N=1–306; 0–92%).
• The result: The model reproduces size-dependent craniofacial defect rates among survivors and predicts that boundary sealing shifts mean rescue from 0% to 100%, reorganizing rescue structure in line with predicted field geometry.

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