Fig. 3: Computational model reveals the role of high fluctuations at the active interface in determining the outcome of cell competition.
From: Force transmission is a master regulator of mechanical cell competition
a, Example simulation snapshot with mE-cad KO cells (green) losing to mWT cells (blue) at the interface (red lines), keeping in mind the periodic boundary conditions (PBC). b, Extrusion density map representing the spatial distribution of extrusion events, corresponding to the simulation in a. c, Susceptibility of two-dimensional, that is, in-plane, isotropic stress field and the out-of-plane component of the stress tensor normalized by the maximum value in mE-cad KO cells for each, as a function of distance from the interface. The distance is normalized by the initial cell radius. The data correspond to the simulation in a. d, Spatial correlation of the in-plane (Corr. in; two-dimensional) isotropic stress for each cell type corresponding to the simulation in a. e, Out-of-plane stress component field, normalized by the maximum value of in-plane compression. f, Probability density function (PDF) for fluctuations in the out-of-plane stress component, normalized by the maximum value of the in-plane compression for each cell type near the interface within the distance of four times the cell radius on each side. The colour shades capture the temporal evolution of the PDFs, where nsim= 10,000 is the total number of time steps. g, Susceptibility of in-plane isotropic stress field for mE-cad KO cells for fixed cell–substrate adhesion and various cell–cell adhesion strengths (\({\widetilde{{\rm{\omega }}}}_{{\rm{cc}}}\)) normalized by the value for the lowest cell–cell adhesion at the interface. h, Extrusion PDFs corresponding to g. i, Spatial correlations corresponding to coarse-grained in-plane isotropic stress fields averaged (both ensemble and temporal) and centred around an extruding cell in a square domain of eight times cell radius for fixed cell–substrate adhesion and varying cell–cell adhesions corresponding to g. j, Cumulative distribution function (CDF) corresponding to the average out-of-plane stress fields normalized by the maximum in-plane compression around an extruding cell, showing higher localization for lower cell–cell adhesion: the peak shifts to the left and becomes less tensile as cell–cell adhesion increases. Data are presented as mean values ± s.d.
