Contact inhibition of locomotion generates collective cell migration without chemoattractants in an open domain

Neural crest cells are embryonic stem cells that migrate throughout embryos and, at different target locations, give rise to the formation of a variety of tissues and organs. The directional migration of the neural crest cells is experimentally described using a process referred to as contact inhibition of locomotion, by which cells redirect their movement upon the cell-cell contacts. However, it is unclear how the migration alignment is affected by the motility properties of the cells. Here, we theoretically model the migration alignment as a function of the motility dynamics and interaction of the cells in an open domain with a channel geometry. The results indicate that by increasing the influx rate of the cells into the domain a transition takes place from random movement to an organized collective migration, where the migration alignment is maximized and the migration time is minimized. This phase transition demonstrates that the cells can migrate efficiently over long distances without any external chemoattractant information about the direction of migration just based on local interactions with each other. The analysis of the dependence of this transition on the characteristic properties of cellular motility shows that the cell density determines the coordination of collective migration whether the migration domain is open or closed. In the open domain, this density is determined by a feedback mechanism between the flux and order parameter, which characterises the alignment of collective migration. The model also demonstrates that the coattraction mechanism proposed earlier is not necessary for collective migration and a constant flux of cells moving into the channel is sufficient to produce directed movement over arbitrary long distances.