Regensburg 2019 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 33: Statistical physics of biological systems I (joint session BP/DY)
DY 33.9: Talk
Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 17:15–17:30, H4
Mesoscopic roughness analysis of propagating cell fronts: physical statistics as an in-vitro phenotype probe — •Guillaume Rapin1, Audrey Rawleigh2, Aziza Merzouki3, Ermano Moriggi2, Bastien Chopard3, Thierry Giamarchi1, Steven A. Brown2, and Patrycja Paruch1 — 1DQMP, University of Geneva, Switzerland — 2IST, Universtiy of Zurich, Switzerland — 3CSD, University of Geneva, Switzerland
The competition between elasticity and disorder governs the geometry and dynamics of interfaces in many systems, from ferroic domain walls to bacterial colonies. In the latter case, it has been used as a framework to explore cell front evolution, with local mapping of displacements and forces, and the origin of the cell front roughness.
Here, we report on the geometry and dynamics of propagating rat epithelial cell fronts in artificial wound healing assays over 72 hours, studied over 5 orders of magnitude in length scale ranging from 1µ m to 2cm. Under standard conditions, they present 3 distinct regimes: power law growth of the roughness with characteristic roughness exponent values of ζ=0.55 at sub-cell length scales, and of ζ≈ 0.3 at few-cell length scales, reaching a scale-independent maximum beyond 400µ m. Exposure to a selection of chemical inhibitors targeting cell division rates, mobility, or intercellular communications changes this roughening behaviour, as well as the initial and steady-state dynamics of the cell front. Our results suggest that collective motion on the order of 4-10 cells plays a key role in the roughness evolution of the front. These experimental results will be compared to numerical simulations.