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Numerical investigation of the role of intercellular interactions on collective epithelial cell migration

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Abstract

During collective cell migration, the intercellular forces will significantly affect the collective migratory behaviors. However, the measurement of mechanical stresses exerted at cell–cell junctions is very challenging. A recent experimental observation indicated that the intercellular adhesion sites within a migrating monolayer are subjected to both normal stress exerted perpendicular to cell–cell junction surface and shear stress exerted tangent to cell–cell junction surface. In this study, an interfacial interaction model was proposed to model the intercellular interactions for the first time. The intercellular interaction model-based study of collective epithelial migration revealed that the direction of cell migration velocity has better alignment with the orientation of local principal stress at higher maximum shear stress locations in an epithelial monolayer sheet. Parametric study of the effects of adhesion strength indicated that normal adhesion strength at the cell–cell junction surface has dominated effect on local alignment between the direction of cell velocity vector and the principal stress orientation, while the shear adhesion strength has little effect, which provides compelling evidence to help explain the force transmission via cell–cell junctions between adjacent cells in collective cell motion and provides new insights into “adhesive belt” effects at cell–cell junction.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by a grant from National Institutes of Health (Grant No. SC2GM112575) and a grant from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), Office of the Vice President for Research. Valuable discussions with Professor Jean Jiang and Professor Bruce Nicholson at Biochemistry Department of University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and with Professor Xiaodu Wang at Mechanical Engineering of UTSA are gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, 78249, USA

    Liqiang Lin & Xiaowei Zeng

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  1. Liqiang Lin
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Correspondence to Xiaowei Zeng.

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Lin, L., Zeng, X. Numerical investigation of the role of intercellular interactions on collective epithelial cell migration. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 17, 439–448 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-017-0970-y

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