Seeds of Locally Aligned Motion and Stress Coordinate a Collective Cell Migration

We find how collective migration emerges from mechanical information transfer between cells. Local alignment of cell velocity and mechanical stress orientation—a phenomenon dubbed “plithotaxis”—plays a crucial role in inducing coordinated migration. Leader cells at the monolayer edge better align ve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biophysical journal 2015-12, Vol.109 (12), p.2492-2500
Main Authors: Zaritsky, Assaf, Welf, Erik S., Tseng, Yun-Yu, Angeles Rabadán, M., Serra-Picamal, Xavier, Trepat, Xavier, Danuser, Gaudenz
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomechanical Phenomena
Biophysics
Cell adhesion & migration
Cell Biophysics
Cell Movement
Epithelial Cells - cytology
Extracellular Space - metabolism
Humans
Molecular Imaging
Stress, Mechanical
Velocity
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Summary:We find how collective migration emerges from mechanical information transfer between cells. Local alignment of cell velocity and mechanical stress orientation—a phenomenon dubbed “plithotaxis”—plays a crucial role in inducing coordinated migration. Leader cells at the monolayer edge better align velocity and stress to migrate faster toward the open space. Local seeds of enhanced motion then generate stress on neighboring cells to guide their migration. Stress-induced motion propagates into the monolayer as well as along the monolayer boundary to generate increasingly larger clusters of coordinately migrating cells that move faster with enhanced alignment of velocity and stress. Together, our analysis provides a model of long-range mechanical communication between cells, in which plithotaxis translates local mechanical fluctuations into globally collective migration of entire tissues.
ISSN:0006-3495
1542-0086
DOI:10.1016/j.bpj.2015.11.001