"syncytium" and "multinucleate cell" are treated as synonyms but correspond to different concepts

[lubianat]

In Wikidata, two concepts are mapped to CL_0000228, "syncitium" and "multinucleate cell".

The Wikipedia entry on multinulceate cells (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinucleate) splits then in two groups:

• "syncytia" (formed by cell fusion) or
• "coenocytes" (formed by nuclear division not being followed by cytokinesis).

There is no entry on the Cell Ontology for "Coenocyte" as far as I can tell.

I suggest the following:

• Creation of two new terms, subclasses of "multinucleate cell": coenocyte and syncitium
• Removal of "syncitium" as a synonym of multinucleate cell.

[github-actions]

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[dosumis]

I think this looks reasonable on a strict reading of term meanings and different modes of formation will likely have different molecular underpinnings. Potential issues:

1. Multinucleate is parent to binucleate, would people call cardiocytes syncytia? They are by the definition above/
2. Inconsistent term usage: The earliest stages of Drosophila develpment are referred to the "syncitial blastoderm stage" but are strictly a "coenocyte" by this definition.
3. Two axes of classification need to be carefully managed. Should we add binucleate syncytium and binucleate coenocyte? Athough, management might not be too much of a problem in CL as I think, given CL's vertebrate focus, most or all multinucleate cell types in CL will live under syncytium.

[lubianat]

hanks, David, some thoughts on that:

1 - I think that under these strict definitions, cardiomyocytes would be coenocytes, as formed by karyokinesis without cytokinesis (ref1, ref2). As a coment, on CL, I did not find a "binucleated cardiocyte" entry, and cardiocyte does not seem to be under binucleate cell.

2 - I agree, it seems like this issue is also acknowledged on the Wikipedia page for coenocytes. Maybe we can move "syncitium" from exact synonym to some other synonym classification, maybe close synonym or related.

3 - That is a good point. My gut feeling is of having "coenocyte" and "syncitium", but keep other classifications under the broader "multinucleated cell" .

Also, apparently this coenocyte x syncitium naming issue is worrying people since 1936: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.84.2189.533.a