REVIEW article
Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Signaling
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1656051
This article is part of the Research TopicSystems Biology: Encoding Cell Signaling with Quantitative Molecular Tools and ModelsView all 6 articles
Linking Signaling Dynamics and Cell Fate Decisions Through Single-Cell Imaging: Evidence and Challenges
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universita Vita-Salute San Raffaele Facolta di Medicina e Chirurgia, Milan, Italy
- 2San Raffaele Hospital (IRCCS), Milan, Italy
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Our ever-growing capacity to observe dynamic processes at the single-cell level has highlighted how cells use complex signaling dynamics to provide adequate responses to intra-and extracellular cues. Specifically, there is increasing evidence that signaling dynamics can be functional in determining cell fate decisions. In this work, we provide an overview of the growing body of evidence supporting this idea across diverse biological contexts — including immune responses, reactions to DNA damage and growth factors, and embryonic development. In doing so, we aim to provide a precise conceptualization of what is meant when we say that signaling dynamics can determine cell fate, a unifying view of the methodologies used to sustain this claim and to identify some of the existing gaps in our mechanistic understanding of this process. We believe that the body of work hereby described strongly supports the importance of considering the temporal dimension of signaling when seeking to understand how cellular responses are regulated.
Keywords: signaling dynamics, Cell fate decisions, Live-cell microscopy, NF-kB, p53, MAPK, Hes1
Received: 29 Jun 2025; Accepted: 02 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bonsignore, Pozzi, Aloi, Mazza and Zambrano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Davide Mazza, mazza.davide@hsr.it
Samuel Zambrano, zambrano.samuel@hsr.it
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.