Effect of noise in the direction of motion over the spatial distribution and proliferation of migrating cell collectives

Abstract

A variety of living and nonliving systems exhibit collective motion. From swarm robotics to bacterial swarms, and tissue wound healing to human crowds, examples of collective motion are highly diverse but all of them share the common necessary ingredient of moving and interacting agents. While collective motion has been extensively studied in nonproliferating systems, how the proliferation of constituent agents affects their collective behavior is not well understood. Here, we focus on growing active agents as a model for cells and study how the interplay between noise in their direction of movement and proliferation determines the overall spatial pattern of collective motion. In this agent-based model, motile cells possess the ability to adhere to each other through cell-cell adhesion, grow in size, and divide. Cell-cell interactions influence not only the direction of cell movement but also cell growth through a force-dependent mechanical feedback process. We show that noise in the direction of a cell's motion has striking effects on both the emergent spatial distribution of cell collectives and proliferation. While higher noise strength leads to a random spatial distribution of cells, we also observe increased cell proliferation. On the other hand, low noise strength leads to a ringlike spatial distribution of cell collectives together with lower proliferation. Our findings provide insight into how noisy cell motion determines the local spatial organization of cells with consequent mechanical feedback on cell division impacting cell proliferation due to the formation of cell clusters. Published by the American Physical Society 2024