Intercellular communication
communication (e.g. chemical or eletrical) between cells
Intercellular communication (ICC) refers to the various ways and structures that biological cells use to communicate with each other directly or through their environment. Often the environment has been thought of as the extracellular spaces within an animal. More broadly, cells may also communicate with other animals, either of their own group or species, or other species in the wider ecosystem. Different types of cells use different proteins and mechanisms to communicate with one another using extracellular signalling molecules or electric fluctuations which could be likened to an intercellular Ethernet. Components of each type of intercellular communication may be involved in more than one type of communication, making attempts at clearly separating the types of communication listed somewhat futile. Broadly speaking, intercellular communication may be categorized as being within a single animal or between an animal and other animals in the ecosystem in which it lives. In this article, intercellular communication has been further collated into various areas of research rather than by functional or structural characteristics.
Communication within an organism
Cell signalling
Molecular cell signaling
Single-celled organisms sense their environment to seek food and may send signals to other cells to behave symbiotically or reproduce. A classic example of this is the slime mold. The slime mold shows how intercellular communication with a small molecule (e.g., cyclic AMP) allows a simple organism to form from an organized aggregation of single cells.
The public source identifies “Intercellular communication” as communication (e.g. chemical or eletrical) between cells. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Intercellular, communication and chemical.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104519408. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Intercellular communication” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.