File:Tissue- and organ-level bioelectric patterns.png

English: (A) Spatial distributions of Vmem across tissue can be visualized by voltage-sensitive reporter dyes to reveal the depolarized head end and hyperpolarized tail end of the bioelectric circuit in a planarian flatworm fragment that determines its future regenerative anatomical polarity.

(B) Endogenous prepatterns instructively guide morphogenesis, such as this‘ ‘bioelectric face’’ distribution on the early frog ectoderm that determines the gene-expression domains and the borders of the compartments for the eyes, mouth, arches, etc. (white signal demarcates depolarized cells, such as the embryo’s right eye, appearing slightly earlier than the left). Drugs, ion-channel misexpression, or optogenetics can be used to alter this pattern resulting in predictable changes in the domains of expression of craniofacial patterning genes and subsequent head anatomy.

(C) Individual cells transforming into cancer depolarize as a very early step in the process, leading to an electrical decoupling from tissue-level organizational cues (here shown as an early stage of a tumor in tadpoles injected with human oncogenes; voltage-sensitive fluorescent dyes reveal location and size of the cells abandoning their participation in organogenesis in favor of tumorigenesis).