A Celluar Potts Model for Collective Cell Migration

Collective cell migration is a key process during various biological events such as embryonic morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer cell invasion. The coordinated cellular movement is regulated by numerous biophysical parameters (e.g., cell elasticity, interfacial surface tension and cell adhesion) as well as biochemical interactions (e.g., cell signaling, gradient sensing and matrix degradation).

Here, we present two applications of the Cellular Potts Model (CPM) to describe different collective migration patterns that are experimentally observed: 1) coherent rotational motion during aggregation of social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum cells and, 2) distinct invasion modes of cancer cells embedded in extracellular matrix (ECM). In these examples, we show that the CPM can produce results that qualitatively and quantitatively match experimental results. Furthermore, we show that by perturbing model parameters, we are able to explore a variety of migration modes and make experimentally testable predictions.