Morphological entropy encodes cellular migration strategies on multiple length scales.

Area of Science:

• Cell Biology
• Biophysics
• Quantitative Biology

Background:

• Cell migration is vital for physiological and pathological processes.
• Cell morphology adapts to microenvironmental cues like topotaxis and chemotaxis during migration.
• Understanding cell migration mechanisms encoded in morphology dynamics is challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a universal metric, Cell Morphological Entropy (CME), for quantifying cell morphology dynamics.
• To demonstrate CME's utility in analyzing cell migration strategies and behaviors.
• To provide a physically interpretable tool for real-time morphology measurement.

Main Methods:

• Combined parametric morphological analysis with Shannon entropy to develop CME.
• Applied CME to diverse normal and tumor cell lines in various in vitro microenvironments.
• Analyzed geometric constraints on cell nuclei and collective cell migration.

Main Results:

• CME accurately quantifies complex cellular morphology at multiple length scales.
• Demonstrated CME's effectiveness in analyzing MDA-MB-231 cell nucleus behavior under geometric constraints.
• Illustrated CME's application in understanding MCF-10A cell interactions and tumor spheroid transitions.

Conclusions:

• CME is a powerful, physically interpretable tool for real-time, multi-scale morphology measurement.
• CME provides deeper insights into cell migration, behavioral modes, and collective motility.
• This approach enhances understanding of cell dynamics in complex microenvironments.