Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Cell motion inside dense tissues governs many biological processes, including embryonic development and cancer metastasis, and recent experiments suggest that these tissues exhibit collective glassy behavior. To make quantitative predictions about glass transitions in tissues, we study a self-propelled Voronoi (SPV) model that simultaneously captures polarized cell motility and multi-body cell-cell interactions in a confluent tissue, where there are no gaps between cells. We demonstrate that the model exhibits a jamming transition from a solid-like state to a fluid-like state that is controlled by three parameters: the single-cell motile speed, the persistence time of single-cell tracks, and a target shape index that characterizes the competition between cell-cell adhesion and cortical tension. In contrast to traditional particulate glasses, we are able to identify an experimentally accessible structural order parameter that specifies the entire jamming surface as a function of model parameters. We demonstrate that a continuum Soft Glassy Rheology model precisely captures this transition in the limit of small persistence times, and explain how it fails in the limit of large persistence times. These results provide a framework for understanding the collective solid-to-liquid transitions that have been observed in embryonic development and cancer progression, which may be associated with Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal transition in these tissues.
Source: Physical Review X
Language: English
Subfield: Cell Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,200
Awards: Quantitative Modeling of Cell Shape Changes During Organogenesis, G1469107674, G3227856414, IGERT: Soft Interfaces - Bridging the Divide in Graduate education (iBriD), G4010323335, G4265142103, G5030039864, G6602446436, CC-NIE Networking Infrastructure: Enhancing the OrangeGrid - Upgrading the Syracuse Campus Network to Enable High Throughput Research Computing, CAREER: Flow, Failure, and Migration in Glassy Materials, Self-organization of dense active matter, Collaborative Research: Utilization of Smart Materials and Predictive Modeling to Integrate Intracellular Dynamics with Cell Biomechanics and Collective Tissue Behavior
OpenAlex ID: W2218510376