Rounding of aggregates of biological cells: Experiments and simulations

TL;DR

This study investigates how surface tension and size affect the rounding process of biological cell aggregates through experiments with chick embryonic cells and simulations using the cellular Potts model, revealing exponential relaxation behaviors.

Contribution

It demonstrates the applicability of the cellular Potts model to non-equilibrium cell aggregate dynamics and uncovers how relaxation time varies with size and surface tension.

Findings

Relaxation follows exponential decay in experiments and simulations.

Relaxation time decreases with higher surface tension.

Relaxation time increases faster than linearly with aggregate size.

Abstract

The influence of surface tension and size on rounding of cell aggregates are studied using chick embryonic cells and numerical simulations based on the cellular Potts model. Our results show exponential relaxation in both cases as verified in previous studies using 2D Hydra cell aggregates. The relaxation time decreases with higher surface tension as expected from hydrodynamics laws. However, it increases faster than linearly with aggregate size. The results provide an additional support to the validity of the cellular Potts model for non-equilibrium situations and indicate that aggregate shape relaxation is not governed by the hydrodynamics of viscous liquids.