Fig. 3: Basal tension changes within a clone induce tumor-like exponential growth.

a Schematic for introducing tension disparity is shown, wherein normal cells in blue have basal tension T_B, and mutant cells in pink (and their progenies) have a lowered basal tension i.e., T_T < T_B, making the ratio R = T_B/T_T ≥ 1. Inter-cellular/bulk tensions are represented as T₀, and are left unchanged. b Final 3D morphology is shown for a single clone (red cells) with either normal properties (R = 1, left) and a mutant clone with decreased basal tension (R = 1.15, right). c 2D basal cross-section of the same mutant clone, where initial, middle and final frames are shown, depicting a much faster growth as compared to Fig. 2b. d Number of basal cells, averaged over surviving clones and plotted with respect to rescaled time (t/τ_D), undergoes a transition from linear for R = 1 to exponential for R = 1.1 (lighter to darker shade of pink). e The final basal size, plotted against tension changes R, shows a monotonically increasing trend. Error bars mean ± SEM (at least 60 simulations per value of R). Parameter set: Total number of cells = 192, s₀ = 5.3, base-line/WT tension value T_B = 1.0 and medium noise(v₀ = 0.1).