Signal Associa: hot tumors elicit field-spanning NK cell coordination linked to their recruitment
- 1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA; Health Research Institute, Michigan Technological University, Hought
Abstract
Cells coordinate through coupled dynamics, yet whether observed correlations reflect genuine coupling is rarely tested. Signal Associa is an open-source framework uniting six coupling methods with automated stationarization and surrogate testing. Benchmarking against six ground truth systems reveals a trichotomy of coupling regimes, each with a different best method: correlation for coupling carried by shared trends and cycles, Granger causality for linear stochastic coupling, and convergent cross-mapping for nonlinear coupling; agreement across methods identifies the regime from data. In 13 movies of natural killer (NK) cells across three colorectal tumor microenvironments, NK cells formed field-spanning coupling networks at a conserved rate; at matched exposure to tumor signal, NK cells around hot tumors were more globally integrated, and hot tumors with a more integrated NK network tended to attract more NK cells. In focal adhesions, stiffness strengthened vinculin-FAK coupling, most at protruding edges. Surrogates cut lagged-correlation false positives from 23-92% to about 5%.
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BibTeX
@misc{rostami2026signal,
title = {{Signal Associa: hot tumors elicit field-spanning NK cell coordination linked to their recruitment}},
author = {M. Rostami and H. Choi and Y. Rho and N. L. Jeon and S. J. Han},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.21.760734},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.21.760734v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Signal Associa: hot tumors elicit field-spanning NK cell coordination linked to their recruitment
AU - M. Rostami
AU - H. Choi
AU - Y. Rho
AU - N. L. Jeon
AU - S. J. Han
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.21.760734
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.21.760734v1
AB - Cells coordinate through coupled dynamics, yet whether observed correlations reflect genuine coupling is rarely tested. Signal Associa is an open-source framework uniting six coupling methods with automated stationarization and surrogate testing. Benchmarking against six ground truth systems reveals a trichotomy of coupling regimes, each with a different best method: correlation for coupling carried by shared trends and cycles, Granger causality for linear stochastic coupling, and convergent cross-mapping for nonlinear coupling; agreement across methods identifies the regime from data. In 13 movies of natural killer (NK) cells across three colorectal tumor microenvironments, NK cells formed field-spanning coupling networks at a conserved rate; at matched exposure to tumor signal, NK cells around hot tumors were more globally integrated, and hot tumors with a more integrated NK network tended to attract more NK cells. In focal adhesions, stiffness strengthened vinculin-FAK coupling, most at protruding edges. Surrogates cut lagged-correlation false positives from 23-92% to about 5%.
ER -