Detecting long-range attraction between migrating cells based on p-value distributions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a statistical method using p-value distributions to determine whether migrating immune cells in experiments move randomly or in a goal-directed manner, such as chemotaxis.

Contribution

The study presents a novel approach to analyze cell migration by comparing p-value distributions against randomized targets to identify goal-directed movement.

Findings

Method reliably distinguishes between random and chemotactic migration.

Simulated data validate the effectiveness of the p-value distribution approach.

Potential application in immune response and cell behavior studies.

Abstract

Immune cells have evolved to recognize and eliminate pathogens, and the efficiency of this process can be measured in a Petri dish. Yet, even if the cells are time-lapse recorded and tracked with high resolution, it is difficult to judge whether the immune cells find their targets by mere chance, or if they approach them in a goal-directed way, perhaps using remote sensing mechanisms such as chemotaxis. To answer this question, we assign to each step of an immune cell a 'p-value', the probability that a move, at least as target-directed as observed, can be explained with target-independent migration behavior. The resulting distribution of p-values is compared to the distribution of a reference system with randomized target positions. By using simulated data, based on various chemotactic search mechanisms, we demonstrate that our method can reliably distinguish between blind migration and target-directed 'hunting' behavior.