A biased random walk approach for modeling the collective chemotaxis of neural crest cells

TL;DR

This paper introduces a biased random walk model to simulate collective neural crest cell migration, linking intracellular Rac1 dynamics with cell-cell interactions and chemoattractants, applicable in various biological scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a novel modeling approach that integrates intracellular Rac1 dynamics with collective cell movement, bridging individual behavior and population-level descriptions.

Findings

Model effectively captures collective migration behaviors.

Derivation of PDE for cell density from individual-based model.

Applicable to diverse biological contexts like development and cancer.

Abstract

Collective cell migration is a multicellular phenomenon that arises in various biological contexts, including cancer and embryo development. "Collectiveness" can be promoted by cell-cell interactions such as co-attraction and contact inhibition of locomotion. These mechanisms act on cell polarity, pivotal for directed cell motility, through influencing the intracellular dynamics of small GTPases such as Rac1. To model these dynamics we introduce a biased random walk model, where the bias depends on the internal state of Rac1, and the Rac1 state is influenced by cell-cell interactions and chemoattractive cues. In an extensive simulation study we demonstrate and explain the scope and applicability of the introduced model in various scenarios. The use of a biased random walk model allows for the derivation of a corresponding partial differential equation for the cell density while still maintaining a certain level of intracellular detail from the individual based setting.