Phase-field modeling of border cell cluster migration in Drosophila
Fig 9
The short‑range Gurken cue drives the dorsal turn of the border‑cell cluster: comparison of live imaging and phase‑field simulation.
Top row: Time-lapse images of the egg chamber expressing a membrane localized GFP marker (green), which shows the border cell cluster and outlines the oocyte. The border‑cell cluster (bright spot) migrates toward the right (A), and as it nears the surface of the oocyte, reorients dorsally toward the germinal vesicle (B) and continues along the anterior side of the oocyte towards the dorsal side of the egg chamber (top) (C). Bottom row: Corresponding snapshots from the phase‑field model at the indicated simulation times (T = 258, 426, 1311). The arrows depict the TIM force, which is proportional to the local chemoattractant gradient c(x,y). The shallow dorsal component of c becomes appreciable once the cluster contacts the oocyte, redirecting TIM stresses upward and reproducing the experimentally-observed dorsal migration without additional parameter tuning.