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Collective motility and mechanical waves in cell clusters

  • Regular Article - Living Systems
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Abstract

Epithelial cell clusters often move collectively on a substrate. Mechanical signals play a major role in organizing this behavior. There are a number of experimental observations in these systems which await a comprehensive explanation. These include: the internal strains are tensile even for clusters that expand by proliferation; the tractions on the substrate are often confined to the edges of the cluster; there can exist density waves within the cluster; and for cells in an annulus, there is a transition between expanding clusters with proliferation and the case where cells fill the annulus and rotate around it. We formulate a mechanical model to examine these effects. We use a molecular clutch picture which allows “stalling”—inhibition of cell contraction by external forces. Stalled cells are passive from a physical point of view and the un-stalled cells are active. By attaching cells to the substrate and to each other, and taking into account contact inhibition of locomotion, we get a simple picture for many of these findings as well as predictions that could be tested.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Center for Theoretical Biological Physics NSF PHY-2019745, and also by PHY-1605817 and NSF-EFRI-1741618.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77030-1402, USA

    Youyuan Deng & Herbert Levine

  2. Applied Physics Graduate Program, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005-1827, USA

    Youyuan Deng

  3. Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Herbert Levine

  4. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1040, USA

    Xiaoming Mao & Leonard M. Sander

  5. Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1107, USA

    Leonard M. Sander

Authors
  1. Youyuan Deng
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  2. Herbert Levine
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  3. Xiaoming Mao
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  4. Leonard M. Sander
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All authors designed and conducted the research, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leonard M. Sander.

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Deng, Y., Levine, H., Mao, X. et al. Collective motility and mechanical waves in cell clusters. Eur. Phys. J. E 44, 137 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-021-00141-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-021-00141-7

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