TY - JOUR T1 - Cell Shape Dynamics: From Waves to Migration A1 - Driscoll, Meghan K. A1 - McCann, Colin A1 - Kopace, Rael A1 - Homan, Tess A1 - Fourkas, John T. A1 - Parent, Carole A1 - Losert, Wolfgang Y1 - 2012/03/15 N2 - Author Summary Migration of cells on surfaces and through tissues is an important part of life, from the amazingly coordinated migration of cells during development to the uncontrollable migration of metastatic cancer cells. Here we investigate the physics of cell migration with the goal of gaining new insights into how cells move and how they respond to obstacles. Through detailed quantitative analysis of time-dependent cell shapes, we demonstrate the existence of wave-like dynamic shape changes during the migration of Dictyostelium discoideum. Specifically, we observe that in migrating cells local protrusions propagate from the front toward the back along roughly alternating sides of the cell. Near the leading edge, protrusions that have not yet adhered to the surface move faster than the cell migration speed. We also investigated cells that were not in contact with a surface and cells extended over cliff edges. Such cells exhibit similar protrusion dynamics at their leading edges but, since in this case the protrusions cannot adhere to a surface, the associated boundary curvature waves continue to travel along the sides of the cells. While our study shows wave-like dynamics under many different conditions, we do not directly measure whether waves involve transport of membrane or intracellular material. JF - PLOS Computational Biology JA - PLOS Computational Biology VL - 8 IS - 3 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002392 SP - e1002392 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002392 ER -