From jamming to collective cell migration through a boundary induced transition

TL;DR

This study investigates how wound healing induces a transition from a jammed to a flowing state in cellular monolayers, combining experiments and simulations to understand the underlying phase transition mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a combined experimental and numerical approach to characterize the wound-induced unjamming transition in various cell types.

Findings

Wound healing triggers unjamming in cell monolayers.

Cells modify self-propulsion and alignment to cross the phase transition.

The transition is characterized by finite-size scaling in an active particle model.

Abstract

Cell monolayers provide an interesting example of active matter, exhibiting a phase transition from a flowing to jammed state as they age. Here we report experiments and numerical simulations illustrating how a jammed cellular layer rapidly reverts to a flowing state after a wound. Quantitative comparison between experiments and simulations shows that cells change their self-propulsion and alignement strength so that the system crosses a phase transition line, which we characterize by finite-size scaling in an active particle model. This wound-induced unjamming transition is found to occur generically in epithelial, endothelial and cancer cells.