Non-equilibrium phase transitions in hybrid Voronoi models of cell colonies

TL;DR

This study investigates how nuclear size and cell interactions influence non-equilibrium phase transitions in cell colonies, revealing new pathways between different cellular phases consistent with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Voronoi model incorporating nuclear effects, demonstrating their role in phase transitions of cell colonies.

Findings

Nuclear size affects phase boundaries in cell colony models.

Competition between cell repulsion and adhesion leads to various phase transitions.

Tuning nuclear properties can induce transitions between motile and mesenchymal-like phases.

Abstract

Eukaryotic cells are characterized by a stiff nucleus whose effect in modeling the collective behavior of cell aggregates is usually underestimated. However, increasing experimental evidence links nuclear modifications with phenotypic transition, like the one between epithelial and mesenchymal states. In this work, we explore the effect of short-range repulsive forces in the non-equilibrium dynamics of the self-propelled Voronoi model. We show that the competition between steric repulsions (representing nuclear/cellular compressibility) and Vertex interactions (mimicking cell-cell adhesion/interaction and cytoskeleton organization) generate a variety of non-equilibrium phase transitions from Motility-Induced Phase Separation to mesenchymal-like phases up to disordered confluent configurations. Notably, we found that tuning the nucleus's effective size/compressibility provides an additional way to cross the boundary between the different possible phases in line with experimental observations.