Marangoni effect and cell spreading

TL;DR

This paper explores how the Marangoni effect, driven by surface tension gradients, influences cell spreading and shear stress during collective cell migration, impacting processes like cancer invasion and tissue morphogenesis.

Contribution

It introduces the concept that the Marangoni effect explains shear stress generation in cell monolayers, linking surface tension gradients to directed cell migration.

Findings

Marangoni effect causes directed cell spreading from low to high surface tension regions.

Surface tension gradients induce shear stress during cell rearrangement.

Marangoni-driven spreading can facilitate cancer cell invasion.

Abstract

Cells are very sensitive to the shear stress (SS). However, undesirable SS is generated during physiological process such as collective cell migration (CCM) and influences the biological processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer invasion. Despite extensive research devoted to study the stress generation caused by CCM, we still do not fully understand the main cause of SS generation. An attempt is made here to offer some answers to these questions by considering the rearrangement of cell monolayers. The SS generation represents a consequence of natural and forced convection. While forced convection is dependent on cell speed, the natural convection is induced by the gradient of tissue surface tension. The phenomenon is known as the Marangoni effect. The gradient of tissue surface tension induces directed cell spreading from the regions of lower tissue surface tension to the regions of higher tissue surface tension. This directed cell migration is described by the Marangoni flux. The phenomenon has been recognized during the rearrangement of (1) epithelial cell monolayers and (2) mixed cell monolayers made by epithelial and mesenchymal cells. The consequence of the Marangoni effect is an intensive spreading of cancer cells through an epithelium. In this work, a review of existing literature about SS generation caused by CCM is given along with the assortment of published experimental findings, in order to invite experimentalists to test given theoretical considerations in multicellular systems.