Functional Analysis of Spontaneous Cell Movement under Different Physiological Conditions

TL;DR

This study quantitatively analyzes spontaneous cell movement in Dictyostelium under various physiological conditions, revealing complex dynamics and applying a Langevin model to relate movement to cellular functions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive statistical analysis of spontaneous cell movement and applies a generalized Langevin model to connect movement patterns with physiological states.

Findings

Cells exhibit anomalous diffusion with power-law velocity distributions.

Velocity and movement persistency increase during development.

The Langevin model effectively describes cell movement dynamics.

Abstract

Cells can show not only spontaneous movement but also tactic responses to environmental signals. Since the former can be regarded as the basis to realize the latter, playing essential roles in various cellular functions, it is important to investigate spontaneous movement quantitatively at different physiological conditions in relation to cellular physiological functions. For that purpose, we observed a series of spontaneous movements by Dictyostelium cells at different developmental periods by using a single cell tracking system. Using statistical analysis of these traced data, we found that cells showed complex dynamics with anomalous diffusion and that their velocity distribution had power-law tails in all conditions. Furthermore, as development proceeded, average velocity and persistency of the movement increased and as too did the exponential behavior in the velocity distribution. Based on these results, we succeeded in applying a generalized Langevin model to the experimental data. With this model, we discuss the relation of spontaneous cell movement to cellular physiological function and its relevance to behavioral strategies for cell survival.