Cooperative Contraction Behaviors of a One-Dimensional Cell Chain

Collective behaviors of multiple cells play important roles in various physiological and pathological processes, but the mechanisms of coordination among cells are highly unknown. Here, we build a one-dimensional cell-chain model to quantitatively study cell cooperativity. Combining experimental and theoretical approaches, we showed that the matrix stiffness, intercellular adhesion strength, and cell-chain length have a significant effect on the cooperative contraction of the cell chains. Cells have strong cooperativity, i.e., exhibiting a united contraction mode, in shorter cell chains or on softer matrix or with higher intercellular adhesion strength. In contrast, cells would exhibit a divided contraction when the cell chain was long or on stiffer matrix or with weaker adhesion strength. In addition, our quantitative results indicated that the cooperativity of cells is regulated by the coupling between matrix stiffness and intercellular adhesion, which can be quantified by an explicit parameter group. These results may provide guidelines for regulating the cooperativity of cells in their collective behaviors in tissue morphogenesis and tissue engineering in biomedical applications.