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Cell colonies under pressure: How growth can prevent motion

Date:
April 28, 2025
Source:
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
Summary:
The interaction between growth and the active migration of cells plays a crucial role in the spatial mixing of growing cell colonies. This connection will lay the groundwork for new approaches to understanding the dynamics of bacterial colonies and tumors.
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The interaction between growth and the active migration of cells plays a crucial role in the spatial mixing of growing cell colonies. This connection was discovered by scientists from the Department of Living Matter Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS). Their results provide new approaches to understanding the dynamics of bacterial colonies and tumors.

The ability to actively migrate is a fundamental property of living matter such as cells. Scientists at the MPI-DS have investigated how this motion interacts with the growth of the entire colony, which can be observed in a wide variety of cellular aggregates. Such growth happens when cells in tissues, bacterial colonies, cell cultures in the laboratory or in tumors divide continuously and take up more and more space.

The researchers recreated this scenario in a minimal computer model of a growing three-dimensional cell colony and also gave the cells a certain amount of force to actively move, an ability known as motility. In their simulations, they found that more frequent cell divisions and thus faster growth can restrict the motion of cells, resulting in less mixing of the colony. In this case, hardly any migration of individual cells is visible, even if they have the potential to move.

"Surprisingly, we found that there is a relatively sharp threshold of motility up to which the growth of the colony almost completely inhibits the migration of cells," says Torben Sunkel, first author of the study. Cells only begin to move through the tissue, once a certain ratio of motility to growth rate is exceeded. In biology, it is well-known that cells can switch their motility on or off in response to biochemical signals or due to other mechanisms. "But in our model, the transition arises all by itself purely from mechanical interactions -- a prime example of collective behavior that arises from the interaction of many individual parts," emphasizes Philip Bittihn, senior author of the study and group leader in the Department of Living Matter Physics at MPI-DS. As the researchers discovered, the reason for this behavior is two-fold: On the one hand, cell division and growth cause a lack of space inside the colony, which prevents motion directly through mechanical contacts. On the other hand, rapid spatial expansion of the colony means that cells have to travel further, which makes any existing motion less effective.

How cell colonies organize and structure themselves is important in many areas. The study may therefore also provide new starting points for experimental and medical research -- for example for bacterial colonies, wound healing processes, tissue engineering or in cancer research.


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Materials provided by Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Torben Sunkel, Lukas Hupe, Philip Bittihn. Motility-induced mixing transition in exponentially growing multicellular spheroids. Communications Physics, 2025; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42005-025-02090-5

Cite This Page:

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. "Cell colonies under pressure: How growth can prevent motion." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 April 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250428221912.htm>.
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. (2025, April 28). Cell colonies under pressure: How growth can prevent motion. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 1, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250428221912.htm
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. "Cell colonies under pressure: How growth can prevent motion." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250428221912.htm (accessed May 1, 2025).

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