Séminaire Théorie

Mardi 27 Janvier 2015 à 11h00.

active gels, cell motility and cell trajectories

''Eukaryotic cell movement has essential functions in development, immunity and cancer, and so far very diverse cell migration patterns have been reported, but no general rule has emerged. We will show on the basis of experimental data in vitro and in vivo that in fact cell persistence, which quantifies the straightness of trajectories, is robustly coupled to cell migration speed. We suggest that this universal coupling constitutes a generic law of cell migration, which originates in the advection of polarity cues by an actin cytoskeleton undergoing flows at the cellular scale. Our analysis relies on a theoretical model that we validated by measuring the persistence of cells upon modulation of actin flow speeds, and upon optogenetic manipulation of the binding of an actin regulator to actin filaments. Beyond the quantitative prediction of the coupling, the model yields a generic phase diagram of cellular trajectories, which recapitulates the full range of observed migration patterns.''