Cell signalling is essential for cell fate determination and tissue patterning. As signalling ligands
are presented to the receiving cell, they are recruited and recognised by the cell membrane as to elicit
a biological response and to pattern multicellular tissues. Cells can accumulate and transport these
ligands, which results in an emergent organisation of the ligands' spatial distribution. To study this
organisation, we make use of a simpli ed experimental setup, in which single mouse embryonic stem
cells (mESCs) can interact with immobilized ligands. We introduce a two species age-dependent
correlation function that allows the description and quanti cation of the spatio-temporal dynamics
of single cell-ligand interactions. Through the analysis of mESC data and numerical simulations we
show that cells act as e ective force- eld generators, perturbing and organising their environment.
This organisation, captured in the form of an ageing e ective potential, is an emergent property of
the population of single cells interacting with randomly distributed localized ligands.