Contact Inhibition of Locomotion in vivo controls neural crest directional migration

Contact Inhibition of Locomotion was discovered by Abercrombie more than 50 years ago to describe the behaviour of fibroblast cells confronting each other in vitro, where they retract their protrusions and change direction upon contact1,2. Its failure was suggested to contribute to malignant invasion3-6. However, the molecular basis of Contact Inhibition of Locomotion and whether it also occurs in vivo are still unknown. Here we show that neural crest cells, a highly migratory and multipotent embryonic cell population, whose behaviour has been likened to malignant invasion6-8, exhibit Contact Inhibition of Locomotion both in vivo and in vitro, and that this accounts for their directional migration. When two migrating neural crest cells meet, they stop, collapse their protrusions and change direction. In contrast, when a neural crest cell meets another cell type, it fails to display Contact Inhibition of Locomotion; instead, it invades the other tissue, like metastatic cancer cells3,5,9. We show that inhibition of non-canonical Wnt signalling abolishes both Contact Inhibition of Locomotion and the directionality of neural crest migration. Wnt signalling members localise at the site of cell contact, leading to activation of RhoA in this region. These results provide the first example of Contact Inhibition of Locomotion in vivo, present an explanation for coherent directional migration of group of cells and establish a novel role for non-canonical Wnt signalling.