Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 2
Monday–Friday, March 14–18, 2016; Baltimore, Maryland
Session P55: Active Fluids in Living Matter: Collective Cell MotilityInvited
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Sponsoring Units: DBIO DFD GSOFT Chair: Yuhai Tu, IBM, Inc. Room: Hilton Baltimore Holiday Ballroom 6 |
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 2:30PM - 3:06PM |
P55.00001: Collective dynamics of cell migration and cell rearrangements Invited Speaker: Alexandre Kabla Understanding multicellular processes such as embryo development or cancer metastasis requires to decipher the contributions of local cell autonomous behaviours and long range interactions with the tissue environment. A key question in this context concerns the emergence of large scale coordination in cell behaviours, a requirement for collective cell migration or convergent extension. I will present a few examples where physical and mechanical aspects play a significant role in driving tissue scale dynamics. \begin{enumerate} \item Geometrical confinement is one of the key external factors influencing large scale coordination during collective migration. Using a combination of in vitro experiments and numerical simulations, we show that the velocity correlation length, measured in unconfined conditions, provides a convenient length scale to predict the dynamic response under confinement. The same length scale can also be used to quantify the influence range of directional cues within the cell population. \item Heterogeneity within motile cell populations is frequently associated with an increase in their invasive capability and appears to play an important role during cancer metastasis. Using in silico experiments, we studied the way cell invasion is influenced by both the degree of cell coordination and the amount of variability in the motile force of the invading cells. Results suggest that mechanical heterogeneity dramatically enhances the invasion rate through an emerging cooperative process between the stronger and weaker cells, accounting for a number of observed invasion phenotypes. \item Effective convergent extension requires on a consistent orientation of cell intercalation at the tissue scale, most often in relation with planar cell polarity mechanisms to define the primary axes of deformation. Using a novel modelling approach for cells mechanical interactions, we studied the dynamics of substrate free motile cell populations. Ongoing work shows in particular that nematic order emerges from interacting cells without the need for biochemical cues setting tissue polarity. \end{enumerate} [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 3:06PM - 3:42PM |
P55.00002: Multicellular Streaming in Solid Tumours Invited Speaker: Josef Kas As early as 400 BCE, the Roman medical encyclopaedist Celsus recognized that solid tumours are stiffer than surrounding tissue. However, cancer cell lines are softer, and softer cells facilitate invasion. This paradox raises several questions: Does softness emerge from adaptation to mechanical and chemical cues in the external microenvironment, or are soft cells already present inside a primary solid tumour? If the latter, how can a more rigid tissue contain more soft cells? Here we show that in primary tumour samples from patients with mammary and cervix carcinomas, cells do exhibit a broad distribution of rigidities, with a higher fraction of softer and more contractile cells compared to normal tissue. Mechanical modelling based on patient data reveals that, surprisingly, tumours with a significant fraction of very soft cells can still remain rigid. Moreover, in tissues with the observed distributions of cell stiffnesses, softer cells spontaneously self-organize into lines or streams, possibly facilitating cancer metastasis. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 3:42PM - 4:18PM |
P55.00003: Active unjamming of confluent cell layers Invited Speaker: M Cristina Marchetti 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. Motivated by these observations, we have studied a model of dense tissues that combines self-propelled particle models and vertex models of confluent cell layers. In this model, referred to as self-propelled Voronoi (SPV), cells are described as polygons in a Voronoi tessellation with directed noisy cell motility and interactions governed by a shape energy that incorporates the effects of cell volume incompressibility, contractility and cell-cell adhesion. Using this model, we have demonstrated a new density-independent solid-liquid transition in confluent tissues controlled by cell motility and a cell-shape parameter measuring the interplay of cortical tension and cell-cell adhesion. An important insight of this work is that the rigidity and dynamics of cell layers depends sensitively on cell shape. We have also used the SPV model to test a new method developed by our group to determine cellular forces and tissue stresses from experimentally accessible cell shapes and traction forces, hence providing the spatio-temporal distribution of stresses in motile dense tissues. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 4:18PM - 4:54PM |
P55.00004: Modeling collective cell motility Invited Speaker: Wouter-Jan Rappel Eukaryotic cells often move in groups, a critical aspect of many biological and medical processes including wound healing, morphogenesis and cancer metastasis. Modeling can provide useful insights into the fundamental mechanisms of collective cell motility. Constructing models that incorporate the physical properties of the cells, however, is challenging. Here, I discuss our efforts to build a comprehensive cell motility model that includes cell membrane properties, cell-substrate interactions, cell polarity, and cell-cell interaction. The model will be applied to a variety of systems, including motion on micropatterned substrates and the migration of border cells in Drosophila. [Preview Abstract] |
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 4:54PM - 5:30PM |
P55.00005: Water Dynamics in Living Cells and Tumor Cell Migration in Confined Microenvironments Invited Speaker: Sean Sun More than 70\% of the total mass in living cells is water. In most biological scenarios water serves as a passive medium responsible for solvation and proper functioning of proteins. However, it has been long recognized that there are situations where dynamic transport of water in cells is important. First, cells actively transport water in order to maintain its volume, and because cell volume directly influences cell shape and internal hydrostatic pressure, it is a critical aspect of cell mechanics. Furthermore, cell volume is coupled to protein synthesis which ultimately determines the cell size. Therefore water transport and cell volume dynamics ultimately impact cell growth and division. Second, epithelial cells in organs such as the eye and kidney actively transport water across the cell membrane and the epithelial layer. Indeed, water channels such as aquaporins increase water permeability of the membrane and facilitate this transport. Recent, we have shown that in confined microenvironments, active transport of water is responsible for actin-independent cell movement in confined spaces, especially for cancer cells. These results suggest that cells actively control its water content. The active regulation of water content is a crucial aspect of cell dynamics. We will discuss a theoretical model of cell pressure/volume control. Implications of this model for active cell dynamics in multi-cellular epithelial sheets will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
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