Distinguishing cell shoving mechanisms
Authored by Kerry A Landman, Barry D Hughes, Pingyu Nan, Darragh M Walsh
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193975
Sponsors:
Australian Research Council (ARC)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Model Code URLs:
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Abstract
Motivated by in vitro time-lapse images of ovarian cancer spheroids
inducing mesothelial cell clearance, the traditional agent-based model
of cell migration, based on simple volume exclusion, was extended to
include the possibility that a cell seeking to move into an occupied
location may push the resident cell, and any cells neighbouring it, out
of the way to occupy that location. In traditional discrete models of
motile cells with volume exclusion such a move would be aborted. We
introduce a new shoving mechanism which allows cells to choose the
direction to shove cells that expends the least amount of shoving effort
(to account for the likely resistance of cells to being pushed). We call
this motility rule `smart shoving'. We examine whether agent-based
simulations of different shoving mechanisms can be distinguished on the
basis of single realisations and averages over many realisations. We
emphasise the difficulty in distinguishing cell mechanisms from cellular
automata simulations based on snap-shots of cell distributions,
site-occupancy averages and the evolution of the number of cells of each
species averaged over many realisations. This difficulty suggests the
need for higher resolution cell tracking.
Tags
Migration
patterns
Model
Oligodendrocytes