Directed persistent motion maintains sheet integrity during multi-cellular spreading and migration

Kenechukwu David Nnetu, Melanie Knorr, Dan Strehle, Mareike Zink and Josef A. K€as

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2012/SM/C2SM07208D?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2FSM+%28RSC+-+Soft+Matter+latest+articles%29

This research group is studying the collective cell migration properties of the following cell monolayers: MCF-10A epithelial cells has weak cell-cell adherence and single cells could detach; MDA-MB-231 epithelial cells could not detach from each other; and NIH 3t3 fibroblast cells did not interact and could not migrate together. They studied the dynamics of the cell monolayers, for example, they found evidence on the heterogenity of the MCF-10A cells with the lower cell density regions having higher velocities. As well, the cells were treated with EGTA (ethylene glycol tetraacetic acid), which chelates calcium and reduces intercellular interactions. This experiment showed that even at high cell densities in which cells did not readily detach in the MCF-10A monolayer, introduction of the chelator did promote single cell detachment and monolayers could move toward the cells detached or the escaped cells could move back into the monolayer. Overall, the researchers suggest that cell dynamics plays an important role in collective cell migration and these cell-cell interactions can produce stable boundaries.