Active Vertex Model for cell-resolution description of epithelial tissue mechanics
Fig 8
Snapshots of a growing epithelial tissue.
Frames (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) have 37, 63, 124, 4633 and 23787 cells and are at times 50, 500, 1000, 3500 and 5000, respectively. Cells have a chance to divide if their area is greater than a critical area Ac = 2.8a2 after which the probability of a cell to divide increases linearly with its area (see Eq (16)). In this simulation, the shape factor was set to p0 = 3.10. (f) Log-linear plot of the total number of cells as a function of simulation time. The growth rate of the patch is initially exponential but starts to slow at around 3000 cells. This is due to cells in the centre of the cluster being prevented from expanding by the surrounding tissue. (g) Tissue after 5000 time units (106 time steps) with each cell coloured by pressure. Pressure has built up in the centre of the tissue while close to the edge the average pressure is low. (h) Average pressure (averaged over the polar angle) as a function of the radial distance from the centre of the tissue. (i) Distribution of the number of neighbours for cells in the system shown in (g).