Cellular differentiation is one of the hallmarks of complex multicellularity, allowing individual organisms to capitalize on among-cell functional diversity. The evolution of multicellularity is a major evolutionary transition that allowed for the increase of organismal complexity in multiple lineages, a process that relies on the functional integration of cell-types within an individual. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed to explain the origins of cellular differentiation, but we lack a general understanding of what makes one cell-type distinct from others, and how such differentiation arises. Here, we describe how the use of Boolean networks (BNs) can aid in placing empirical findings into a coherent conceptual framework, and we emphasize some of the standing problems when interpreting data and model behaviors.

细胞分化是复杂的多细胞性的标志之一，允许单个生物利用细胞间功能多样性。多细胞性的进化是一个主要的进化过渡，使得多种谱系中的生物复杂性增加，这一过程依赖于个体内细胞类型的功能整合。已经提出了多种假说来解释细胞分化的起源，但是我们对什么使一种细胞类型与其他细胞不同以及如何产生这种分化缺乏普遍的了解。在这里，我们描述了布尔网络（BN）的使用如何有助于将经验发现放入一致的概念框架中，并且我们强调了解释数据和模型行为时的一些常备问题。