Massachusetts General Hospital

The Dance of the Cells: A Minuet or a Mosh?

22/May/2011

The physical forces that guide how cells migrate — how they manage to get from place to place in a coordinated fashion inside the living body — are poorly understood. Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia  have, for the first time, devised a way to measure these forces during collective cellular migration. Their surprising conclusion is that the cells fight it out, each pushing and pulling on its neighbors in a chaotic dance, yet together moving cooperatively toward their intended direction.

Link to HSPH release on study co-authored by MGH investigator Corey Hardin.