Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Ever since the ground breaking work of Trepat et al. in 2009, we know that cell colonies growing on a substrate can be under tensile mechanical stress. The origin of tension has so far been attributed to cellular motility forces being oriented outward of the colony. Works in the field mainly revolve around how this orientation of the forces can be explained, ranging from velocity alignment, self-sorting due to self-propulsion, to kenotaxis. In this work, we demonstrate that tension in growing colonies can also be explained without cellular motility forces! Using a combination of well established tissue growth simulation technique and analytical modelling, we show how tension can arise as a consequence of simple mechanics of growing tissues. Combining these models with a minimalistic motility model shows how colonies can expand while under even larger tension. Furthermore, our results and analytical models provide novel analysis procedures to identify the underlying mechanics.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Yao, Chenyun, Elgeti, Jens
Institution: Forschungszentrum Jülich
Language: English
Subfield: Cell Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: China Scholarship Council
OpenAlex ID: W4407245035