A new mathematical study suggests that when neighboring cells adjust their pulling forces in response to one another, they create an attraction that could help explain why cells gather on soft surfaces. The research, led by Dr. Assaf Zemel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), offers a physical explanation for a long-standing observation in cell biology: cells grown on soft surfaces often aggregate into groups or networks, while those on harder surfaces tend to remain more dispersed.
The study develops a mathematical framework that accounts for the mutual adjustment of forces between cells. Rather than treating each cell’s pull as a fixed, static value, the theory allows the force to change dynamically in response to the stretching produced by surrounding cells. This approach captures the back-and-forth interaction where cells tug on the material around them, sense the deformation caused by their neighbors, and subsequently adjust their own internal force-generating machinery. By modeling this reciprocal response, the researchers identified an additional, short-range interaction that emerges specifically from ...