2018 Volume 17 Issue 1 Pages 14-19
The motion of cells is extremely complex and crucial for the function of biological systems [1]. Understanding how cells interact with each other to collectively move could prove extremely valuable, and has attracted the attention of many researchers in the fields of biology, medicine, and physics. Those researchers try to construct cell models that are simple but able to reproduce many complex cell behaviors [2-12]. The authors proposed a minimal model which represents cells as two disks connected by a spring, one for the pseudopod (the front of the cell) and the other one for the cell body [13] (See Figure1). By coupling the pseudopod's motility to the extension of the spring, they found that cells naturally exhibit contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), i.e. they slow down and change direction upon contact, and arrest at high cell densities. Furthermore, they found that the shape of the cell greatly influences collective motion. Most importantly, cells with a large front quickly align their motion, suggesting that cells might have evolved broader fronts to facilitate alignment [13] (See Figure2). The model is further extended to include the process of cell division and the contact inhibition of proliferation (CIP) of cells.
