Abstract
Collective migration, the movement of groups in which individuals affect the behaviour of one another, occurs at practically every scale, from bacteria up to whole species' populations. Universal principles of collective movement can be applied at all levels. In this review, we will describe the rules governing collective motility, with a specific focus on the neural crest, an embryonic stem cell population that undergoes extensive collective migration during development. We will discuss how the underlying principles of individual cell behaviour, and those that emerge from a supracellular scale, can explain collective migration.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Multi-scale analysis and modelling of collective migration in biological systems’.
Highlights
Collective migration, the movement of groups in which individuals affect the behaviour of one another, occurs at practically every scale, from bacteria up to whole species’ populations
The annual migration of the great wildebeest in the Serengeti, a group of malignant cancer cells escaping into a blood vessel, bacteria swarming over solid surfaces to produce a biofilm: all of these are examples of collective behaviour, which refers to the phenomenon that an individual unit’s actions are dominated by the influence of others
We will focus on how these rules work during collective cell migration, and how they fit with phenomena that emerge at a higher level: that of the whole migratory group
Summary
The annual migration of the great wildebeest in the Serengeti, a group of malignant cancer cells escaping into a blood vessel, bacteria swarming over solid surfaces to produce a biofilm: all of these are examples of collective behaviour, which refers to the phenomenon that an individual unit’s actions are dominated by the influence of others. These are all examples of collective migration, which is defined by the movement of groups whereby individuals both move in concert with one another and affect each other’s behaviour. Tissue movements that presumably require cells to direct one another because communication and influence are necessary to organize large groups
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