Berlin 2024 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 5: Tissue Mechanics I
BP 5.7: Talk
Monday, March 18, 2024, 17:00–17:15, H 0110
Mechanically-driven stem cell separation in tissues caused by progeny outflux — •Johannes C. Krämer1, Edouard Hannezo2, Gerhard Gompper1, and Jens Elgeti1 — 1Theoretical Physics of Living Matter (IBI-5/IAS-2), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany — 2Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria
The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. We expand the two particle growth model [1,2] to incorporate the text book picture of tissue renewal by stem cells and the corresponding differentiation cascade [3], and find that the model generates unexpected dynamic features: stem cells repel each other in the bulk tissue and are thus found rather isolated, as in a number of in vivo contexts. We demonstrate that this repulsion can be quantitatively described by mapping it to an ensemble of passive Brownian particles with effective repulsive interactions. The effective interaction potential between a pair of stem cells decays exponentially with a characteristic length that spans several cell sizes, corresponding to the outflux volume of differentiated cells generated per stem cell division. By introducing stochastic cell fate decisions we find that tissue pressure controls the stem cell number. Our findings may help understanding the dynamics and evolution of normal and cancerous epithelial tissues.
[1] M. Basan et al 2011 Phys. Biol. 8 026014;
[2] N. Podewitz et al 2015 EPL 109 58005
[3] J. C. Krämer et al 2023 arXiv:2310.04272 [physics.bio-ph]
Keywords: tissue growth; stem cells; computational physics; cell differentiation