Data from: Collective cell migration without proliferation: density determines cell velocity and wave velocity

Collective cell migration contributes to embryogenesis, wound healing and tumor metastasis. Cell monolayer migration experiments help understanding what determines the movement of cells far from the leading edge. Inhibiting cell proliferation limits cell density increase and prevents jamming; we observe long-duration migration and quantify space-time characteristics of the velocity profile over large length- and time-scales. Velocity waves propagate backwards and their frequency depends only on cell density at the moving front. Both cell average velocity and wave velocity increase linearly with the cell effective radius regardless of the distance to the front. Inhibiting lamellipodia decreases cell velocity while waves either disappear or have a lower frequency. Our model combines conservation laws, monolayer mechanical properties and a phenomenological coupling between strain and polarity: advancing cells pull on their followers which then become polarized. With reasonable values of parameters, this model agrees with several of our experimental observations. Together, our experiments and model disantangle the respective contributions of active velocity and of proliferation in monolayer migration, explain how cells maintain their polarity far from the moving front, and highlight the importance of strain-polarity coupling and density in long-range information propagation

mitomycin_data

mitomycin_data is a folder where velocity data are stored in the mitomycin drug case

kymographs_CK666

kymographs_CK666 is a folder where velocity kymographs are stored in the CK666 drug case

Supporting Movie S1.

Monolayer of MDCK cells migrating within a straight strip with mitomycin C to prevent divisions. Phase contrast image showing cell contours. Strip total length 4 mm, width 1 mm. The first image, noted t = 0, is taken after around 5 h of migration. Duration of the movie: 26 h. Because of file size constraints, the movie resolution has been decreased, and the time interval between frame has been doubled (10 min instead of 5 min in the original)

calculPhase

Wavelet cod

Supporting Movie S7.

Same as Movie S3 (time interval between frames: 6 min). After four hours (corresponding to the missing image at the 10th second of the current movie), CK666 is added; lamellipodia (both cryptic and front ones) are no longer detectable

kymographs_mitomycin

kymographs_mitomycin is a folder where velocity kymographs are stored in the mitomycin case

Supporting Movie S3.

Merge of phase-contrast image showing cell contours (Movie S1) in purple, and nuclei labeled with histone GFP (Movie S2) in green

Supporting Movie S4.

Same as Movie S3, with original time interval between frame (5 min), zoomed on the front