Nature Communications (Aug 2018)

Mechanical interactions among followers determine the emergence of leaders in migrating epithelial cell collectives

  • Medhavi Vishwakarma,
  • Jacopo Di Russo,
  • Dimitri Probst,
  • Ulrich S. Schwarz,
  • Tamal Das,
  • Joachim P. Spatz

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05927-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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During collective cell migration, how leader cells emerge is poorly understood. Here, the authors find that small groups of mechanically-interacting follower cells pull on the future leaders to stochastically elect them to their fate.