Modeling of Drosophila Egg Chamber: Chemical Distribution, Force Balance, and Clustered Cell Migration

The Drosophila melanogaster egg chamber provides an accessible biological model for clustered cell dynamics in development, metastasis, and even wound healing. Our modeling covers various stages of egg chamber development from chemical signals initiating a cell fate decision in becoming motile to a coarse-level agent-based force model for clustered cell migration, which utilizes chemical gradients for direction. More recent work extends the coarse-level agent-based force model to interactions between boundary points. We also utilize recent in vivo cluster motion data to derive a reduced 1-D hybrid PDE/agent-based model for migration. I will discuss some preliminary results of these. A recurring theme is that the geometry of the domain while often overlooked can be impactful on migration.