Spatial network representation of complex living tissues

Networks were widely used to describe organizational and functional principles of living organisms across various scales. The topology of such biological complex networks often turned out to be "scale-free", with the power-law distribution of number of links per node, robust and modular with underlying self-similar structure. However, the topology of cytoarchitecture in living tissues has not yet received wide attention from the network perspective. Here we discuss the spatial complex network model of coupled clusters of beta cells in pancreatic islets. Networks of cells in pancreatic islets were constructed from the 2D section images presenting fluorescently labelled intercellular spaces obtained by two-photon laser scanning microscopy of whole pancreas tissue slices, and cells conductances measured electrophysiologically using whole-cell patch-clamp. We find that the heterogeneity of beta cells in intact living islets induces scale-free topology of the tissue network. Furthermore, we show that the islet-like structures visually similar to 2D section images can be obtained using Voronoi diagrams of random points