Observations on the social behaviour of cells in tissue culture: I. Speed of movement of chick heart fibroblasts in relation to their mutual contacts

Abstract

1. 1. Heart fibroblasts from 7–10 day chicks were cultured in liquid medium and observed by time-lapse cinemicrography. 2. 2. Analysis of the films showed a significant inverse relationship between the speed of movement of a cell and the number of other cells with which it was in contact during the observed movement. 3. 3. The possibility was excluded that this correlation was spurious, in that it might be due to confounding with age in culture, with density of surrounding cell population or with distance of the observed cell from the explant. 4. 4. The numbers of contacts between cells was experimentally influenced by placing two explants close together and allowing their outgrowths to fuse. Observation of the peripheral cells of these outgrowths before and after fusion showed that an increased number of contacts caused a decrease in speed. 5. 5. A momentary increase of speed was also correlated with, and probably caused by, the act both of gaining and of losing a contact with another cell. 6. 6. It is suggested that the slowing of fibroblasts by contact with others is mainly to be ascribed to the effects of adhesions between the cells; and the acceleration by change of contact, to the effects of development or rupture of such adhesions.