Poster: Persistent random walk: a phenomenological paradigm for cell migration on solid substrates

Cell migration is crucial to many biological processes, including embryonic morphogenesis, tissue repair, immune response, and cancer progression. Understanding how cells respond to external stimuli (chemical, geometrical, and physical signals) is a major challenge for cell migration. These responses involve movement toward or away from a stimulus, which is called a taxis. We propose the persistent random walk model, in which active randomness are described by persistent random motion and the taxis is included into some "potentials", provide a phenomenological paradigm for quantifying cellular taxis, such as haptotaxis on substrates with fibronectin gradients, curvotaxis on stiff cylinders, and durotaxis on substrates with stiffness gradients.