Institut Jacques Monod Seminar – Bram Hoogland

Invited by the Ladoux/Mege lab, Bram Hoogland (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands) will present an Institut Jacques Monod seminar on the theme:

Data-Driven Inference of Cell Migration and Polarity Dynamics

Abstract:

Cell migration emerges from coupled processes including polarity, biochemical signaling, adhesion, and mechanical interactions. These processes govern how cells move, deform, and respond to one another, yet integrating them into a unified dynamical description remains a major challenge. Experiments typically capture only the resulting behaviors, such as cell shape and trajectories. Here, we present a data-driven framework to learn and disentangle underlying dynamics directly from observed cell behavior and apply it across scales from polarization dynamics of single cells to multicellular systems. In multicellular migration, our framework reveals distinct interaction rules across cell types. Non-cancerous epithelial cells exhibit reciprocal repulsion and velocity alignment, whereas cancerous mesenchymal cells additionally show nonreciprocal interactions that modulate self-propulsion. These nonreciprocal interactions shift the onset and speed of cellular flocks, linking microscopic interaction rules to collective behavior. Using experiments with a molecular polarity marker, (from the amazing Joseph), we uncover how cell motion, morphology, and polarity are coupled. We identify dynamical states associated with persistent migration in small cells but find that these states are absent in large cells, revealing a coupling between cell length and polarity-driven migration. Lastly, we have started making the first steps in learning a full 3D stochastic reaction diffusion model directly from experiments on budding yeast, capturing their symmetry breaking and finding active transport. Overall, our data-driven framework provides a principled route to learning interpretable dynamics from experiments, enabling comparison across cell types and linking cell-intrinsic dynamics and cell-cell interactions to emergent behavior.