SKM 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 30: Active Matter V (joint session BP/CPP/DY)

BP 30.4: Vortrag

Freitag, 31. März 2023, 10:30–10:45, TOE 317

Optimal collective durotaxis through active wetting — Macià-Esteve Pallarès¹, Irina Pi-Jaumà², Isabela Corina Fortunato¹, Valeria Grazu³, Manuel Gómez-González¹, Pere Roca-Cusachs¹, Jesus de la Fuente³, •Ricard Alert⁴, Raimon Sunyer¹, Jaume Casademunt², and Xavier Trepat¹ — ¹Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia — ²University of Barcelona — ³Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Argón — ⁴Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems

The directed migration of cell clusters enables morphogenesis, wound healing and collective cancer invasion. Gradients of substrate stiffness are known to direct migration of cell clusters in a process called collective durotaxis, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Combining theory and experiments, we reveal a connection between collective durotaxis and the wetting properties of cell clusters. Our experiments show that durotaxis is non-monotonic with substrate stiffness, being optimal at intermediate stiffness. Modeling the cell clusters as active droplets, we explain this non-monotonic durotaxis in terms of a balance between active traction, tissue contractility, and surface tension. Finally, we show that the distribution of cluster displacements has a heavy tail, with infrequent but large cellular hops that contribute to durotactic migration. Our study demonstrates a physical mechanism of collective durotaxis based on the wetting properties of active droplets.