Scale-dependent sharpening of interfacial fluctuations in shape-based models of dense cellular sheets

TL;DR

This study investigates how interfacial fluctuations in dense cellular sheets are affected by topological sharpening effects, revealing scale-dependent behavior and providing quantitative analysis through simulations and comparison with biological data.

Contribution

It offers a spectrally resolved analysis of interfacial fluctuations, clarifying the distinction between local fluctuation suppression and surface tension effects, and demonstrates scale-dependent sharpening in tissue interfaces.

Findings

Topological sharpening depends on the measurement scale.

Long simulation times improve fluctuation analysis accuracy.

Experimental data supports short-scale sharpening effects in biological tissues.

Abstract

The properties of tissue interfaces -- between separate populations of cells, or between a group of cells and its environment -- has attracted intense theoretical, computational, and experimental study. Recent work on shape-based models inspired by dense epithelia have suggested a possible ``topological sharpening'' effect, by which four-fold vertices spatially coordinated along a cellular interface lead to a cusp-like restoring force acting on cells at the interface, which in turn greatly suppresses interfacial fluctuations. We revisit these interfacial fluctuations, focusing on the distinction between short length scale reduction of interfacial fluctuations and long length scale renormalized surface tension. To do this, we implement a spectrally resolved analysis of fluctuations over extremely long simulation times. This leads to more quantitative information on the topological sharpening effect, in which the degree of sharpening depends on the length scale over which it is measured. We compare our findings with a Brownian bridge model of the interface, and close by analyzing existing experimental data in support of the role of short-length-scale topological sharpening effects in real biological systems.