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Concentric Gel System to Study the Biophysical Role of Matrix Microenvironment on 3D Cell Migration
Published on: April 3, 2015
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Energy barriers and cell migration in densely packed tissues
Dapeng Bi1, Jorge H Lopez, J M Schwarz
1Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA. mmanning@syr.edu.
Soft Matter
|March 22, 2014
Summary
Cellular tissues show glassy dynamics, but single-cell properties were unclear. This study models energy barriers, revealing exponential distributions related to neighbor count, predicting cell motion in development and disease.
Area of Science:
- Biophysics
- Soft Matter Physics
- Cell Biology
Background:
- Confluent tissues exhibit glassy dynamics, including caging and heterogeneity.
- The influence of individual cell properties on these collective behaviors remains poorly understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop numerical and theoretical models for calculating energy barriers to cell rearrangements.
- To elucidate how single-cell properties govern collective cell migration in monolayers.
Main Methods:
- Numerical and theoretical modeling to compute energy barriers for cell rearrangements.
- Analysis of energy barrier distributions and their dependence on cellular parameters.
- Development of predictive models for cell motion correlation functions.
Main Results:
- Energy barrier heights to cell rearrangements are exponentially distributed.
- Barrier heights systematically depend on a cell's number of neighbors.
- Predicted glassy two-time correlation functions for cell motion, dependent on cell activity.
Conclusions:
- A theoretical framework is established for predicting collective cell motion.
- The findings offer insights into cell migration during wound healing, embryogenesis, and cancer.
- Cellular rearrangement barriers and neighbor interactions are key to tissue dynamics.
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