A biased random walk approach for modeling the collective chemotaxis of neural crest cells

Source abstract

Abstract Collective cell migration is a multicellular phenomenon that arises in various biological contexts, including cancer and embryo development. ‘Collectiveness’ can be promoted by cell-cell interactions such as co-attraction and contact inhibition of locomotion. These mechanisms act on cell polarity, pivotal for directed cell motility, through influencing the intracellular dynamics of small GTPases such as Rac1 . To model these dynamics we introduce a biased random walk model, where the bias depends on the internal state of Rac1 , and the Rac1 state is influenced by cell-cell interactions and chemoattractive cues. In an extensive simulation study we demonstrate and explain the scope and applicability of the introduced model in various scenarios. The use of a biased random walk model allows for the derivation of a corresponding partial differential equation for the cell density while still maintaining a certain level of intracellular detail from the individual based setting.