Heterogenous adhesion of follower cells affects tension profile and velocity of leader cells in primary keratocyte collective cell migration
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)(2020)
Abstract
Single cell studies demonstrate membrane tension to be a central regulator of lamellipodia-driven motility bringing in front-coherence. During collective cell migration, however, tension mapping or existence of intracellular tension-gradients and the effect of cell-cell interactions have remained unexplored. In this study of membrane fluctuations and fluctuation-tension of migrating primary keratocyte cell-sheets, we first show that some leader cells are followed by followers which remain de-adhered from the substrate while being attached to other cells and thus appear to be “taking a ride”. A subtle yet significant enhanced long-timescale velocity in these leaders indicate increased directionality. Intriguingly, such leaders mostly have front-high tension gradients like single keratocytes, while followers and other leaders usually display front-low membrane tension gradients. The front-high tension gradient and higher membrane tension observed in these leaders, despite the high cell-to-cell variability in membrane tension demonstrate how leader-follower interactions and heterogenous adhesion profiles are key in collective cell migration.
### Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
MoreTranslated text
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
![](https://originalfileserver.aminer.cn/sys/aminer/pubs/mrt_preview.jpeg)
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined