Sharp interface model for elastic motile cells.

Area of Science:

• Computational biology
• Biophysics
• Mathematical modeling

Background:

• Simulating motile cell assemblies requires computationally intensive models.
• Previous cell phase field (CPF) models allowed for large deformations but were resource-heavy.
• Understanding cell elastic properties' impact on collective behavior is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a computationally efficient alternative to the existing cell phase field (CPF) model.
• To enable detailed studies on the effect of cell elastic properties on cell assemblies.
• To investigate cell migration dynamics in confluent layers.

Main Methods:

• Derivation of a sharp interface limit of the cell phase field (CPF) model.
• Development of a model with linear scaling in system and cell size.
• Analysis of cell velocity distributions across various confluence levels.

Main Results:

• The new model achieves significant speedup compared to the previous quadratic cell-size dependent CPF.
• The model captures similar behaviors to the original CPF, allowing previously intractable results.
• Full velocity distributions were obtained, revealing regimes with heavier and lighter tails than normal distributions.
• Cell motility was found to decrease linearly with increasing confluence.

Conclusions:

• The sharp interface limit of CPF provides a computationally efficient method for studying cell assemblies.
• The model accurately characterizes cell migration and collective behaviors.
• This approach facilitates deeper understanding of how cell mechanics influence population dynamics.