The Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics of Education Ministry, School of Physics and TEDA Institute of Applied Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.
State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Frontiers Science Center for Cell Responses, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2024 May;11(20):e2307487. doi: 10.1002/advs.202307487. Epub 2024 Mar 23.
Collective cells, a typical active matter system, exhibit complex coordinated behaviors fundamental for various developmental and physiological processes. The present work discovers a collective radial ordered migration behavior of NIH3T3 fibroblasts that depends on persistent top-down regulation with 2D spatial confinement. Remarkably, individual cells move in a weak-oriented, diffusive-like rather than strong-oriented ballistic manner. Despite this, the collective movement is spatiotemporal heterogeneous and radial ordering at supracellular scale, manifesting as a radial ordered wavefront originated from the boundary and propagated toward the center of pattern. Combining bottom-up cell-to-extracellular matrix (ECM) interaction strategy, numerical simulations based on a developed mechanical model well reproduce and explain above observations. The model further predicts the independence of geometric features on this ordering behavior, which is validated by experiments. These results together indicate such radial ordered collective migration is ascribed to the couple of top-down regulation with spatial restriction and bottom-up cellular endogenous nature.
群体细胞作为一种典型的活性物质系统，表现出复杂的协调行为，这些行为对各种发育和生理过程至关重要。本工作发现 NIH3T3 成纤维细胞具有集体的放射状有序迁移行为，这种行为依赖于具有 2D 空间限制的自上而下的持续调节。值得注意的是，单个细胞的运动方式是弱定向的、扩散样的，而不是强定向的弹道式的。尽管如此，集体运动在超细胞尺度上表现出时空异质性和放射状有序排列，表现为起源于边界并向图案中心传播的放射状有序波前。通过采用自下而上的细胞与细胞外基质（ECM）相互作用策略，基于开发的力学模型的数值模拟很好地再现和解释了上述观察结果。该模型进一步预测了这种有序行为的几何特征的独立性，实验验证了这一预测。这些结果表明，这种放射状有序的集体迁移归因于自上而下的调节与空间限制以及自下而上的细胞内固有性质的结合。
