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Cell Motility as Persistent Random Motion: Theories from Experiments

David Selmeczi ^* , Stephan Mosler ^*, Peter H. Hagedorn , Niels B. Larsen ^*  and Henrik Flyvbjerg ^*  

^* Danish Polymer Centre, and Biosystems Department, Risø National Laboratory, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark; Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), H-1117 Budapest, Hungary; and Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Henrik Flyvbjerg, E-mail: henrik.flyvbjerg{at}risoe.dk.

Experimental time series for trajectories of motile cells may contain so much information that a systematic analysis will yield cell-type-specific motility models. Here we demonstrate how, using human keratinocytes and fibroblasts as examples. The two resulting models reflect the cells' different roles in the organism, it seems, and show that a cell has a memory of past velocities. They also suggest how to distinguish quantitatively between various surfaces' compatibility with the two cell types.