Measurement of tissue viscosity to relate force and motion in collective cell migration.

ABSTRACT: In tissue development, wound healing, and cancer invasion, coordinated cell motion arises from active forces produced by the cells. The relationship between force and motion remains unclear, however, because the forces result from a sum of contributions from activity and the constitutive response of the cell collective. Here, we develop a method to decouple the forces due to activity from those due to constitutive response. As a model of an epithelial tissue, we use a monolayer of epithelial cells in the fluid state, for which the constitutive behavior is that of a viscous fluid. By careful study of the distribution of the ratio between shear stress and strain rate, we show that the order of magnitude of viscosity within the epithelial tissue is 100 Pa h and that increasing (decreasing) th

SUBMITTER: McCord M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12771545 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature