Spontaneous spatiotemporal ordering of shape oscillations enhances cell migration

Abstract

The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence collective properties. Here we demonstrate, using numerical simulations, that the interplay of directed motion, shape oscillations, and excluded volume enables cells to locally "synchronize" their motion and thus enhance collective migration. Our model captures elongation and contraction of crawling ameboid cells controlled by an internal clock with a fixed period, mimicking the internal cycle of biological cells. We show that shape oscillations are crucial for local rearrangements that induce ordering of internal clocks between neighboring cells even in the absence of signaling and regularization. Our findings reveal a novel, purely physical mechanism through which the internal dynamics of cells influences their collective behavior, which is distinct from well known mechanisms like chemotaxis, cell division, and cell-cell adhesion.

Flow rate resonance of actively deforming particles

“…T cells searching for a foreign antigen, for instance, form large, dense collectives of millions of cells 9 . Other examples of motile cell collectives are found during morphogenesis and wound healing 10 . Therefore, the study of migrating cell crowds might produce important insights into how to keep active matter systems in a fluid state in challenging conditions.…”

“…Previous studies have investigated the bulk properties of idealized active matter systems with shape-changing particles 10 , 13 , 14 . Our model is inspired by the work of Tjhung and Berthier 13 , who simulated actively deforming circular particles that contract and expand their radii sinusoidally while confined into a closed environment.…”

Collective Cell Movement in Cell-Scale Tension Gradient on Tissue Interface

“…In particular, the driving mechanism of the collective migration have been investigated with focus on their various microscopic cell-scale factors, including the chemotaxis [2], cytoskeleton contraction [3], contact inhibition of locomotion [4], cell-substrate adhesion [5], and cell-cell adhesion [6]. The roles of these factors are well explained through theoretical reproduction of the collective migration in a macroscopic scale [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The cell-cell adhesion has been secondarily considered as a stabilizer of cell-cell contacts, but it is not direct driving force of the collective cell migration [19,20].…”