Modeling how lamellipodia-driven cells maintain persistent migration and interact with external barriers

Sadhukhan, Shubhadeep (author), Martinez-Torres, Cristina (author), Penič, Samo (author), Beta, Carsten (author), Iglič, Aleš (author), Gov, Nir S. (author)

Cell motility is fundamental to many biological processes, and cells exhibit a variety of migration patterns. Many motile cell types follow a universal law that connects their speed and persistency, a property that can originate from the intracellular transport of polarity cues due to the global actin retrograde flow. This mechanism was termed the “Universal Coupling between cell Speed and Persistency”(UCSP). Here we implement a simplified version of the UCSP mechanism in a coarse-grained “minimal-cell” model, which is composed of a three-dimensional vesicle that contains curved active proteins. This model spontaneously forms a lamellipodia-like motile cell shape, which is, however, sensitive and can depolarize into a nonmotile form due to random fluctuations or when interacting with external obstacles. The UCSP implementation introduces long-range inhibition, which stabilizes the motile phenotype. This allows our model to describe the robust polarity observed in cells and explain a large variety of cellular dynamics, such as the relation between cell speed and aspect ratio, cell-barrier scattering, and cellular oscillations in different types of geometric confinements.

• Language: English
• Keywords: external barriers, cell movement, dynamics, cell polarity
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 013319-1-013319-13
• Numbering: Vol. 7, issue 1, art. 013319
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-171060
• UDC: 577
• ISSN on article: 2643-1564
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.013319
• COBISS.SI-ID: 230871555
• Publication date in RUL: 30.07.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Physical review research
• Publisher: American Phyisical Society
• ISSN: 2643-1564
• COBISS.SI-ID: 32822823

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: zunanje ovire, gibanje celice, dinamika, polarnost celice