Swapping in lattice-based cell migration models

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel lattice-based agent model for cell migration that incorporates swapping interactions, deriving a macroscopic model and analyzing how swapping affects cell motility.

Contribution

It develops a new ABM with swapping interactions and derives its macroscopic counterpart, expanding the modeling of complex cell-cell interactions.

Findings

Good agreement between ABM and macroscopic model.

Swapping influences individual cell motility.

Model captures complex cell interactions.

Abstract

Cell migration is frequently modelled using on-lattice agent-based models (ABMs) that employ the excluded volume interaction. However, cells are also capable of exhibiting more complex cell-cell interactions, such as adhesion, repulsion, pulling, pushing and swapping. Although the first four of these have already been incorporated into mathematical models for cell migration, swapping has not been well studied in this context. In this paper, we develop an ABM for cell movement in which an active agent can 'swap' its position with another agent in its neighbourhood with a given swapping probability. We consider a two-species system for which we derive the corresponding macroscopic model and compare it with the average behaviour of the ABM. We see good agreement between the ABM and the macroscopic density. We also analyse the movement of agents at an individual level in the single-species as well as two-species scenarios to quantify the effects of swapping on an agent's motility.