Mechanism of tissue expansion in the early stage of the migration

Abstract

The collective cell migration is observed in many biological processes such as wound healing, embryogenesis, and cancer metastasis. Despite extensive theoretical and experimental studies on collective cell motion, there is no unified mechanism to explain it. In this work, we experimentally report the collectively growing cell colonies in the sub-marginal region of a freely expanding cell monolayer. These colonies could be responsible for the highly aligned collective cell migration observed in front cell rows. Our results provide a basic framework to understand the physical mechanism responsible for collective cell migration in the freely expanding monolayer.