Adapting a Plant Tissue Model to Animal Development: Introducing Cell Sliding into VirtualLeaf

Area of Science:

• Developmental Biology
• Computational Biology
• Biophysics

Background:

• Cell-based mathematical modeling is crucial for understanding collective cell behavior in developmental biology.
• Vertex-based models (VMs) simulate confluent epithelial tissues but have limitations, such as representing cell-cell interfaces as straight lines, unsuitable for tissues under compression.
• Existing models struggle with phenomena like cell rearrangement and extrusion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce an improved cell-based model that overcomes limitations of traditional vertex-based models.
• To extend the VirtualLeaf open-source package to simulate animal development, including cell movement and rearrangement.
• To provide a more versatile tool for studying tissue morphogenesis.

Main Methods:

• Developed a variant of vertex-based models, extending the VirtualLeaf package.
• Introduced a new rule for cell-cell shear/sliding, enabling cell rearrangement (T1) and extrusion (T2) transitions.
• Compared simulation results with traditional vertex-based models for cell sorting and network topology.

Main Results:

• The enhanced VirtualLeaf model successfully simulates animal development by naturally incorporating cell rearrangement and extrusion.
• The updated model produces different results compared to traditional VMs for differential adhesion-driven cell sorting.
• The model accurately predicts the neighborhood topology of soft cellular networks.

Conclusions:

• The enhanced VirtualLeaf model offers a more realistic and versatile approach to simulating collective cell behavior in developmental biology.
• This advancement allows for the study of a wider range of biological phenomena, including those in animal tissues.
• The improved model provides new insights into tissue mechanics and morphogenesis.