Statistical physical models of cellular motility

Cellular motility is required for a wide range of biological behaviors and functions, and the topic poses a number of interesting physical questions. In this work, we construct and analyze models of various aspects of cellular motility using tools and ideas from statistical physics. We begin with a Brownian dynamics model for actin-polymerization-driven motility, which is responsible for cell crawling and “rocketing” motility of pathogens. Within this model, we explore the robustness of self-diffusiophoresis, which is a general mechanism of motility. Using this mechanism, an object such as a cell catalyzes a reaction that generates a steady-state concentration gradient that propels the object in a particular direction. We then apply these ideas to a model for depolymerization-driven motility during bacterial chromosome segregation. We find that depolymerization and protein-protein binding interactions alone are sufficient to robustly pull a chromosome, even against large loads. Next, we investigate how forces and kinetics interact during eukaryotic mitosis with a many-microtubule model. Microtubules exert forces on chromosomes, but since individual microtubules grow and shrink in a force-dependent way, these forces lead to bistable collective microtubule dynamics, which provides a mechanism for chromosome oscillations and microtubule-based tension sensing. Finally, we explore kinematic aspects of cell motility in the context of the immune system. We develop quantitative methods for analyzing cell migration statistics collected during imaging experiments. We find that during chronic infection in the brain, T cells run and pause stochastically, following the statistics of a generalized Lévy walk. These statistics may contribute to immune function by mimicking an evolutionarily conserved efficient search strategy. Additionally, we find that naive T cells migrating in lymph nodes also obey non-Gaussian statistics. Altogether, our work demonstrates how physical principles and techniques can be applied to understand biological phenomena mechanistically and/or quantitatively