Cooperative motility emerges in crowds of T cells and prevents jamming

Wortel, I. M., Postat, J., Mihaylova, M., Merino, M., Bhagrath, A., Cerf, A., Harris, M., Wouters, L., Wiebke, L. E., Parisi, D. R., et al.

10.1101/2024.10.21.618803 · was preprinted

discovery

Surfaced because: matches the platform's topic region.

relevance 0.27 openness 0.00 novelty 0.30

Abstract

Interacting, self-propelled particles are prone to jamming when crowded. This well-described phenomenon is shared by diverse systems including cars, animal colonies, and pedestrians. T cells, essential effectors of adaptive immunity, seemingly defy this principle: the rapid migration enabling their protective function persists even in tightly packed tissue environments - from the thymus where T cells develop, to lymphoid organs they survey for antigen, to tissues they clear from infection. Here we studied T cell crowds by combining experiments of T cells migrating in microfluidic devices with in silico models. We observed that while single T cells are highly heterogeneous in their motility, in crowds they synchronized their speeds and formed stable, motile trains. Our models showed that the emergence of this flocking-like behavior can be explained by a combination of two interaction mechanisms at the cell-cell interface: adhesion maintains cohesive T cell groups, and force transmission accelerates slower cells. Not all immune cells flock when they are crowded: neutrophils in the same settings slowed down with increasing cell density. Thus, cooperative motion may enable T cells to remain motile in densely packed tissue environments, preventing jams that curtail the motion of other crowded systems.

Lifecycle

biorxiv v2 2026-07-09 source ↗

Discussion

No qualifying discussion yet.