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Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells

The mechanical micro-environment of cells and tissues influences key aspects of cell structure and function, including cell motility. For proper tissue development, cells need to migrate, interact, and form contacts. Cells are known to exert contractile forces on underlying soft substrates and sense...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Bose, Subhaya, Dasbiswas, Kinjal, Gopinath, Arvind
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8077938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33920918
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9040428
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author Bose, Subhaya
Dasbiswas, Kinjal
Gopinath, Arvind
author_facet Bose, Subhaya
Dasbiswas, Kinjal
Gopinath, Arvind
author_sort Bose, Subhaya
collection PubMed
description The mechanical micro-environment of cells and tissues influences key aspects of cell structure and function, including cell motility. For proper tissue development, cells need to migrate, interact, and form contacts. Cells are known to exert contractile forces on underlying soft substrates and sense deformations in them. Here, we propose and analyze a minimal biophysical model for cell migration and long-range cell–cell interactions through mutual mechanical deformations of the substrate. We compute key metrics of cell motile behavior, such as the number of cell-cell contacts over a given time, the dispersion of cell trajectories, and the probability of permanent cell contact, and analyze how these depend on a cell motility parameter and substrate stiffness. Our results elucidate how cells may sense each other mechanically and generate coordinated movements and provide an extensible framework to further address both mechanical and short-range biophysical interactions.
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spelling pubmed-80779382021-04-28 Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells Bose, Subhaya Dasbiswas, Kinjal Gopinath, Arvind Biomedicines Article The mechanical micro-environment of cells and tissues influences key aspects of cell structure and function, including cell motility. For proper tissue development, cells need to migrate, interact, and form contacts. Cells are known to exert contractile forces on underlying soft substrates and sense deformations in them. Here, we propose and analyze a minimal biophysical model for cell migration and long-range cell–cell interactions through mutual mechanical deformations of the substrate. We compute key metrics of cell motile behavior, such as the number of cell-cell contacts over a given time, the dispersion of cell trajectories, and the probability of permanent cell contact, and analyze how these depend on a cell motility parameter and substrate stiffness. Our results elucidate how cells may sense each other mechanically and generate coordinated movements and provide an extensible framework to further address both mechanical and short-range biophysical interactions. MDPI 2021-04-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8077938/ /pubmed/33920918 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9040428 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bose, Subhaya
Dasbiswas, Kinjal
Gopinath, Arvind
Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells
title Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells
title_full Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells
title_fullStr Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells
title_full_unstemmed Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells
title_short Matrix Stiffness Modulates Mechanical Interactions and Promotes Contact between Motile Cells
title_sort matrix stiffness modulates mechanical interactions and promotes contact between motile cells
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8077938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33920918
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9040428
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