Propagating waves of directionality and coordination orchestrate collective cell migration.

ABSTRACT: The ability of cells to coordinately migrate in groups is crucial to enable them to travel long distances during embryonic development, wound healing and tumorigenesis, but the fundamental mechanisms underlying intercellular coordination during collective cell migration remain elusive despite considerable research efforts. A novel analytical framework is introduced here to explicitly detect and quantify cell clusters that move coordinately in a monolayer. The analysis combines and associates vast amount of spatiotemporal data across multiple experiments into transparent quantitative measures to report the emergence of new modes of organized behavior during collective migration of tumor and epithelial cells in wound healing assays. First, we discovered the emergence of a wave of coordinated

SUBMITTER: Zaritsky A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4109844 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature