Intercellular stress reconstitution from traction force data

Juliane Zimmermann; Ryan L Hayes; Markus Basan; José N Onuchic; Wouter-Jan Rappel; Herbert Levine

doi:10.1016/j.bpj.2014.06.036

Intercellular stress reconstitution from traction force data

Biophys J. 2014 Aug 5;107(3):548-554. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2014.06.036.

Authors

Juliane Zimmermann¹, Ryan L Hayes², Markus Basan³, José N Onuchic², Wouter-Jan Rappel³, Herbert Levine²

Affiliations

¹ Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Rice University, Houston, Texas. Electronic address: juliane@rice.edu.
² Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Rice University, Houston, Texas.
³ Department of Physics and Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California.

Abstract

Cells migrate collectively during development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. Recently, a method has been developed to recover intercellular stress in monolayers from measured traction forces upon the substrate. To calculate stress maps in two dimensions, the cell sheet was assumed to behave like an elastic material, and it remains unclear to what extent this assumption is valid. In this study, we simulate our recently developed model for collective cell migration, and compute intercellular stress maps using the method employed in the experiments. We also compute these maps using a method that does not depend on the traction forces or material properties. The two independently obtained stress patterns agree well for the parameters we have probed and provide a verification of the validity of the experimental method.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Cell Movement*
Models, Biological*
Stress, Mechanical*
Surface Properties

Grants and funding

P01 GM078586/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States