Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 23: Cell Motility and Migration (in vitro and in vivo)

BP 23.8: Talk

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 16:00–16:15, H43

Keratocyte migration as active Brownian motion: Experiments and theory — •Simon Flyvbjerg Tolic-Norrelykke and Frank Julicher — Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

Fish keratocytes constitute a popular model system for the study of cell migration. Keratocytes are highly mobile cells that live on the outside of fish-scales where they are thought to be involved in wound healing and repair.

We will present some recent experimental findings and theoretical results for the migration of individual keratocytes in two dimensions. Cells were tracked as they migrated on a glass surface in the absence of external stimuli and parameters were extracted from the time-series of positions, allowing for the construction of an equation of motion. In contrast to other existing models for migration, these cells turned out to be best described in terms of an active Brownian process. In active Brownian processes internal energy is converted into motion, leading to a preferred speed that is different from zero and velocity histograms with a characteristic donut shape. Analytical expressions for observable parameters are derived and compared to the experimental data as well as to results from simple simulations.