Celebrating Soft Matter's 10th Anniversary: Cell division: a source of active stress in cellular monolayers.
We introduce the notion of cell division-induced activity and show that the cell division generates extensile forces and drives dynamical patterns in cell assemblies. Extending the hydrodynamic models of lyotropic active nematics we describe turbulent-like velocity fields that are generated by the cell division in a confluent monolayer of cells. We show that the experimentally measured flow field of dividing Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) cells is reproduced by our modeling approach. Division-induced activity acts together with intrinsic activity of the cells in extensile and contractile cell assemblies to change the flow and director patterns and the density of topological defects. Finally we model the evolution of the boundary of a cellular colony and compare the fingering instabilities induced by cell division to experimental observations on the expansion of MDCK cell cultures.
The Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, 1 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3NP, UK. julia.yeomans@physics.ox.ac.uk.
Amin
A
Doostmohammadi
Sumesh P
SP
Thampi
Thuan B
TB
Saw
Chwee T
CT
Lim
Benoit
B
Ladoux
Julia M
JM
Yeomans
D000818:Animals; D002455:Cell Division; D002465:Cell Movement; D048430:Cell Shape; D004285:Dogs; D061985:Madin Darby Canine Kidney Cells; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013314:Stress, Mechanical