Motile human-skin fibroblasts form macroscopic swirling patterns when grown to confluence on a culture dish. In this paper, we investigate the effect of coating the culture-dish surface with collagen on the resulting pattern, using human-skin fibroblast NB1RGB cells as the model system. The presence of the collagen coating is expected to enhance the adherence of the fibroblasts to the dish surface, and thereby also enhance the traction that the fibroblasts have as they move. We find that, contrary to our initial expectation, the coating does not significantly affect the motility of the fibroblasts. Their eventual number density at confluence is also unaffected. However, the coherence length of cell orientation in the swirling pattern is diminished. We also find that the fibroblasts cultured in collagen-coated dishes are rounder in shape and shorter in perimeter, compared with those cultured in uncoated polystyrene or glass culture dishes. We hypothesise that the rounder cell-shape which weakens the cell–cell nematic contact interaction is responsible for the change in coherence length. A simple mathematical model of the migrating fibroblasts is constructed, which demonstrates that constant motility with weaker nematic interaction strength does indeed lead to the shortening of the coherence length. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10867-020-09556-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

中文翻译：

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用胶原蛋白涂覆培养皿对成纤维细胞形状和漩涡图案形成的影响


当在培养皿上生长至汇合时，活动的人类皮肤成纤维细胞形成宏观的漩涡图案。在本文中，我们使用人皮肤成纤维细胞 NB1RGB 细胞作为模型系统，研究了用胶原蛋白涂覆培养皿表面对所得图案的影响。胶原蛋白涂层的存在预计会增强成纤维细胞对培养皿表面的粘附，从而也增强成纤维细胞移动时的牵引力。我们发现，与我们最初的预期相反，涂层并没有显着影响成纤维细胞的运动性。它们最终汇合时的数量密度也不受影响。然而，漩涡图案中细胞方向的相干长度减小了。我们还发现，与在未包被的聚苯乙烯或玻璃培养皿中培养的成纤维细胞相比，在胶原包被的培养皿中培养的成纤维细胞形状更圆，周长更短。我们假设，削弱细胞与细胞向列接触相互作用的圆形细胞形状是导致相干长度变化的原因。构建了迁移成纤维细胞的简单数学模型，这表明向列相互作用强度较弱的恒定运动确实会导致相干长度缩短。电子补充材料 本文的在线版本 (10.1007/s10867-020-09556-3) 包含补充材料，可供授权用户使用。