Intermittent attractions lead to emergent material properties in migrating cell aggregates

Devi PrasadPanigrahi

University College London

"Intermittent attractions lead to emergent material properties in migrating cell aggregates"

Cells migrate in response to gradients in extra-cellular chemical signals in a process known as chemotaxis. Recent experiments on the model microorganism Dictyostelium discoideum have shown that dense aggregates of cells collectively undergoing chemotaxis exhibit emergent fluid-like properties such as viscosity and surface tension. In this work, we use simulations to explain how active interactions between cells give rise to these emergent phenomena. We propose an agent-based model for intermittent cell-cell attachments and show that it gives rise to emergent fluid-like behavior for an aggregate of cells. We generalize this model to include cell-surface attachments, and show that surface-associated aggregates display properties similar to a liquid droplet resting on a surface. Furthermore, we study the situation where cells self-generate and respond to a chemical gradient by consuming an externally supplied chemoattractant. Our simulations reveal how individual cells move inside the swarm as the cells move as a collective. Finally, we predict some of the key cellular processes that are responsible for this collective behavior, and provide hypotheses to be tested in future experimental studies.
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