title: An algorithm to quantify correlated collective cell migration behavior.
abstract: Collective cell migration is an important process that determines cell reorganization in a number of biological events such as development and regeneration. Random cell reorganization within a confluent monolayer is a popular in vitro model system for understanding the mechanisms that underlie coordination between neighboring cells during collective motion. Here we describe a simple automated C++ algorithm to quantify the width of streams of correlated cells moving within monolayers. Our method is efficient and allows analysis of thousands of cells in under a minute; analysis of large data sets is therefore possible without limitations due to computational time, a common analysis bottleneck. Furthermore, our method allows characterization of the variability in correlated stream widths among a cell monolayer. We quantify stream width in the human retinal epithelial cell line ARPE-19 and the fibroblast cell line BJ, and find that for both cell types, stream widths within the monolayer vary in size significantly with a peak width of 40 µm, corresponding to a width of approximately two cells. Our algorithm provides a novel analytical tool to quantify and analyze correlated cell movement in confluent sheets at a population level and to assess factors that impact coordinated collective cell migration.
authors: Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors: Benjamin
authors: B
authors: Slater
authors: Camila
authors: C
authors: Londono
authors: Alison P
authors: AP
authors: McGuigan
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002460:Cell Line; D002465:Cell Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D058948:Cell Tracking / Q000379:methods*; D004847:Epithelial Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological