Anomalous dynamics of cell migration

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that cell migration exhibits anomalous dynamics characterized by superdiffusion and non-Gaussian behavior, which can be modeled using a fractional Klein-Kramers equation to understand underlying cellular mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a fractional Klein-Kramers model to quantitatively describe anomalous cell migration dynamics and links cellular components to migration behavior.

Findings

Cell migration shows superdiffusive behavior.

Velocity autocorrelations decay as a power law.

Model explains migration with few key parameters.

Abstract

Cell movement, for example during embryogenesis or tumor metastasis, is a complex dynamical process resulting from an intricate interplay of multiple components of the cellular migration machinery. At first sight, the paths of migrating cells resemble those of thermally driven Brownian particles. However, cell migration is an active biological process putting a characterization in terms of normal Brownian motion into question. By analyzing the trajectories of wildtype and mutated epithelial (MDCK-F) cells we show experimentally that anomalous dynamics characterizes cell migration. A superdiffusive increase of the mean squared displacement, non-Gaussian spatial probability distributions, and power-law decays of the velocity autocorrelations are the basis for this interpretation. Almost all results can be explained with a fractional Klein- Kramers equation allowing the quantitative classification of cell migration by a few parameters. Thereby it discloses the influence and relative importance of individual components of the cellular migration apparatus to the behavior of the cell as a whole.