Cellular inertia.

It has been experimentally reported that chemotactic cells exhibit cellular memory, that is, a tendency to maintain the migration direction despite changes in the chemoattractant gradient. In this study, we analyzed a phenomenological model assuming the presence of cellular inertia, as well as a response time in motility, resulting in the reproduction of the cellular memory observed in the previous experiments. According to the analysis, the cellular motion is described by the superposition of multiple oscillative functions induced by the multiplication of the oscillative polarity and motility.

Role of the internal degree of freedom of particles in cluster formation.

How the internal degree of freedom of particles influences self-organization is explored by considering cluster formation in many-particle systems. We analyze a general class of dynamical systems in which the interactions between particles depend on their spatial distance and the difference of their internal states. In particular, we analyze a three-particle system in which two types of steady patterns exist, namely, (i) a regular triangle (two-dimensional cluster) and (ii) a straight line (one-dimensional cluster).

A mechanical toy model linking cell-substrate adhesion to multiple cellular migratory responses.

During cell migration, forces applied to a cell from its environment influence the motion. When the cell is placed on a substrate, such a force is provided by the cell-substrate adhesion. Modulation of adhesivity, often performed by the modulation of the substrate stiffness, tends to cause common responses for cell spreading, cell speed, persistence, and random motility coefficient.

Lévy-like movement patterns of metastatic cancer cells revealed in microfabricated systems and implicated in vivo.

Metastatic cancer cells differ from their non-metastatic counterparts not only in terms of molecular composition and genetics, but also by the very strategy they employ for locomotion. Here, we analyzed large-scale statistics for cells migrating on linear microtracks to show that metastatic cancer cells follow a qualitatively different movement strategy than their non-invasive counterparts. The trajectories of metastatic cells display clusters of small steps that are interspersed with long "flights".

Universal area distributions in the monolayers of confluent mammalian cells.

When mammalian cells form confluent monolayers completely filling a plane, these apparently random "tilings" show regularity in the statistics of cell areas for various types of epithelial and endothelial cells. The observed distributions are reproduced by a model which accounts for cell growth and division, with the latter treated stochastically both in terms of the sizes of the dividing cells as well as the sizes of the "newborn" ones--remarkably, the modeled and experimental distributions fit well when all free parameters are estimated directly from experiments.

Juggling motion in a system of motile coupled oscillators.

A particular dynamic steady state emerging in the swarm oscillator model--a system of interacting motile elements with an internal degree of freedom--is presented. In the state, elements form a rotating triangle whose corners appear to catch and throw elements. This motion is referred to as "juggling motion" in this paper.

Dimensionality of clusters in a swarm oscillator model.

We investigate what is called swarm oscillator model where interacting motile oscillators form various kinds of ordered structures. We particularly focus on the dimensionality of clusters which oscillators form. In two-dimensional space, oscillators spontaneously form one-dimensional clusters or two-dimensional clusters.

Hierarchical cluster structures in a one-dimensional swarm oscillator model.

Swarm oscillator model derived by one of the authors (Tanaka), where interacting motile elements form various kinds of patterns, is investigated. We particularly focus on the cluster patterns in one-dimensional space. We mathematically derive all static and stable configurations in final states for a particular but a large set of parameters.

Solution of reduced equations derived with singular perturbation methods.

For singular perturbation problems in dynamical systems, various appropriate singular perturbation methods have been proposed to eliminate secular terms appearing in the naive expansion. For example, the method of multiple time scales, the normal form method, center manifold theory, and the renormalization group method are well known. It is shown that all of the solutions of the reduced equations constructed with those methods are exactly equal to the sum of the most divergent secular terms appearing in the naive expansion.