Disentangling the Behavioural Variability of Confined Cell Migration

Abstract

Cell-to-cell variability is inherent to numerous biological processes, including cell migration. Quantifying and characterizing the variability of migrating cells is challenging, as it requires monitoring many cells for long time windows under identical conditions. Here, we observe the migration of single human breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) in confining two-state micropatterns. To describe the stochastic dynamics of this confined migration, we employ a dynamical systems approach. We identify statistics to measure the behavioural variance of the migration, which significantly exceed those predicted by a population-averaged stochastic model. This additional variance can be explained by the combination of an 'aging' process and population heterogeneity. To quantify population heterogeneity, we decompose the cells into subpopulations of slow and fast cells, revealing the presence of distinct classes of dynamical systems describing the migration, ranging from bistable to limit cycle behaviour. Our findings highlight the breadth of migration behaviours present in cell populations.

References in corpus (3)

• Emergence and Persistence of Collective Cell Migration on Small Circular Micropatterns
• Mechanical heterogeneity in tissues promotes rigidity and controls cellular invasion
• Cell-to-cell variation sets a tissue-rheology-dependent bound on collective gradient sensing

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• A Likelihood Approach for Inference of Population Heterogeneity in Particle Ensembles with Second-Order Langevin Dynamics
• The role of vimentin-nuclear interactions in persistent cell motility through confined spaces