Collective migration guidance
Cells that move as a group, as in wound closure or in an embryo, are influenced by their environment and by each other. Working with Benoît Ladoux and Chwee Teck Lim, we found that the width of the strip a sheet of epithelial cells migrates into determines the pattern of collective motion (Vedula et al., PNAS 2012), and that cell density, cell-cell adhesion and the boundaries set by the matrix combine to guide migration (Doxzen et al., Integrative Biology 2013). The geometry of a gap also decides how efficiently it closes, through a competition between crawling and a contractile cable at the edge (Ravasio et al., Nature Communications 2015). Guidance cues can be passed from cell to cell: topographic information travels through a group of cells without needing intact junctions (Londono et al., PNAS 2014, with Alison McGuigan). In cell sheets, the migration of the group also depends on single-cell mechanics and polarity (Jain et al., Nature Physics 2020, with Benoît Ladoux). A computational framework for cell motility, in which migrating groups interact only mechanically, provides a simple model for how such collective behaviour can arise (Kabla, Journal of the Royal Society Interface 2012).