Can Surface Adhesion Drive Cell Rearrangement? Part II: A Geometrical Model

We present a new flexible, geometrical and dynamical model for cell rearrangement. It includes free boundaries between the cells and the external medium, to account naturally for surface tension effects. The forces deriving from intercellular adhesion and membrane elasticity act on points representing polygonal cells, according to an extended Dirichlet construction. The model simulates the aggregation and rounding of an homogeneous cell collection and short-distance cell movements. n examine the behaviors of a mixture of two cell types: aggregate engulfment, cell dispersal, total and partial cell-sorting, and more exotic patterns, such as "position reversal" and the checkerboard. Including free boundaries causes long-distance cell movements, suggesting that cell surface adhesion can drive passive biological cells.