Two types of critical cell density for mechanical elimination of abnormal cell clusters from epithelial tissue
Fig 5
Effects of the relative proliferation rate and the difference in physical properties between normal and abnormal cells.
(A) The dependence of the relative growth rate of abnormal cells (r) on the phase diagram for elimination success. Simulations were performed under Scenario 2 and Nθ = 100. (B) When a cell divides, its daughter cells have fewer sides on average compared with the mother cell, while the number of sides of the two cells adjacent to the divided cell increases. As there is a positive correlation between the number of cell sides and the average cell size (Lewis’s law), the areas of the adjacent cells increase. Thus, division of normal cells at the interface could be a mechanism for increasing the likelihood of outward expansion of abnormal cell populations. (C, D) The effects of different physical properties between normal and abnormal cells on the phase diagram. When the abnormal cells have a fluidity higher than that of the surrounding normal cells, the critical contractility required for elimination of an abnormal cell cluster becomes smaller than that when normal cells have the same physical property as abnormal cells, and vice versa. The broken lines show the case in which both normal and abnormal cells are fluid (C) or solid (D).