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Mechanical Cell-Matrix Feedback Explains Pairwise and Collective Endothelial Cell Behavior In Vitro

Figure 4

Simulated cell-cell interactions on substrates of varying stiffnesses.

(A) Visualization of cell shapes and substrate strains in absence of external strain. Line pieces indicate strain magnitude and orientation. (B-D) Mean square displacement of individual cells (blue errorbars) and cell pairs (red errorbars) on simulated substrates. (B) 4 kPa; (C) 12 kPa; (D) 32 kPa. Error bars in panels B to D indicate standard deviation for . (E) Number of cell-cell contacts made over 500 MCS between two simulated cells initiated at a distance of fourteen lattice sites from each other. Error bars show standard deviation over simulations (F) Quantification of head-to-tail alignment of cells. An obtuse angle between the two cells' long axes indicates that cells are oriented head-to-tail. Plotted is the fraction of Monte Carlo steps over MCS 20-500 that the two cells are aligned head-to-tail. Shown are means and standard deviations over 100 independent simulations on a field of 0.25×0.25 (100×100 pixels). Insets: examples of acute (left) and obtuse (right) cell configurations.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003774.g004