Direction-Dependent Turning Leads to Anisotropic Diffusion and Persistence

TL;DR

This paper extends kinetic transport models to include orientation-dependent turning rates, revealing how environmental anisotropy influences cell movement, persistence, and diffusion in structured environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel extension to existing models by incorporating anisotropic turning rates, demonstrating their effects on cell migration and diffusion.

Findings

Orientation-dependent turning rates induce persistent motion.

Anisotropic environments enhance diffusion.

Structured domains influence cell movement patterns.

Abstract

Cells and organisms follow aligned structures in their environment, a process that can generate persistent migration paths. Kinetic transport equations are a popular modelling tool for describing biological movements at the mesoscopic level, yet their formulations usually assume a constant turning rate. Here we relax this simplification, extending to include a turning rate that varies according to the anisotropy of a heterogeneous environment. We extend known methods of parabolic and hyperbolic scaling and apply the results to cell movement on micro-patterned domains. We show that inclusion of orientation dependence in the turning rate can lead to persistence of motion in an otherwise fully symmetric environment, and generate enhanced diffusion in structured domains.