Active Vertex Model for Cell-Resolution Description of Epithelial Tissue Mechanics

TL;DR

The paper presents an Active Vertex Model that simulates epithelial tissue mechanics at cell resolution, incorporating active matter dynamics, cell rearrangements, and boundary flexibility for detailed biological tissue studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Active Vertex Model combining vertex dynamics with active matter, enabling detailed, efficient simulations of large epithelial tissues with dynamic behaviors.

Findings

Successfully models cell rearrangements and tissue dynamics

Captures phenomena like fingering instability and wound healing

Provides a flexible framework for tissue mechanics simulations

Abstract

We introduce an Active Vertex Model (AVM) for cell-resolution studies of the mechanics of confluent epithelial tissues consisting of tens of thousands of cells, with a level of detail inaccessible to similar methods. The AVM combines the Vertex Model for confluent epithelial tissues with active matter dynamics. This introduces a natural description of the cell motion and accounts for motion patterns observed on multiple scales. Furthermore, cell contacts are generated dynamically from positions of cell centres. This not only enables efficient numerical implementation, but provides a natural description of the T1 transition events responsible for local tissue rearrangements. The AVM also includes cell alignment, cell-specific mechanical properties, cell growth, division and apoptosis. In addition, the AVM introduces a flexible, dynamically changing boundary of the epithelial sheet allowing for studies of phenomena such as the fingering instability or wound healing. We illustrate these capabilities with a number of case studies.