@article{AlonsoStangeBeta2018,
  author    = {Alonso, Sergio and Stange, Mai Ke and Beta, Carsten},
  title     = {Modeling random crawling, membrane deformation and intracellular polarity of motile amoeboid cells},
  series = {PLoS one},
  volume    = {13},
  journal   = {PLoS one},
  number    = {8},
  publisher = {PLoS},
  address   = {San Fransisco},
  issn      = {1932-6203},
  doi       = {10.1371/journal.pone.0201977},
  pages     = {22},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Amoeboid movement is one of the most widespread forms of cell motility that plays a key role in numerous biological contexts. While many aspects of this process are well investigated, the large cell-to-cell variability in the motile characteristics of an otherwise uniform population remains an open question that was largely ignored by previous models. In this article, we present a mathematical model of amoeboid motility that combines noisy bistable kinetics with a dynamic phase field for the cell shape. To capture cell-to-cell variability, we introduce a single parameter for tuning the balance between polarity formation and intracellular noise. We compare numerical simulations of our model to experiments with the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Despite the simple structure of our model, we found close agreement with the experimental results for the center-of-mass motion as well as for the evolution of the cell shape and the overall intracellular patterns. We thus conjecture that the building blocks of our model capture essential features of amoeboid motility and may serve as a starting point for more detailed descriptions of cell motion in chemical gradients and confined environments.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{AlonsoStangeBeta2018,
  author    = {Alonso, Sergio and Stange, Maike and Beta, Carsten},
  title     = {Modeling random crawling, membrane deformation and intracellular polarity of motile amoeboid cells},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {1014},
  issn      = {1866-8372},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-45974},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-459745},
  pages     = {24},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Amoeboid movement is one of the most widespread forms of cell motility that plays a key role in numerous biological contexts. While many aspects of this process are well investigated, the large cell-to-cell variability in the motile characteristics of an otherwise uniform population remains an open question that was largely ignored by previous models. In this article, we present a mathematical model of amoeboid motility that combines noisy bistable kinetics with a dynamic phase field for the cell shape. To capture cell-to-cell variability, we introduce a single parameter for tuning the balance between polarity formation and intracellular noise. We compare numerical simulations of our model to experiments with the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Despite the simple structure of our model, we found close agreement with the experimental results for the center-of-mass motion as well as for the evolution of the cell shape and the overall intracellular patterns. We thus conjecture that the building blocks of our model capture essential features of amoeboid motility and may serve as a starting point for more detailed descriptions of cell motion in chemical gradients and confined environments.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{MorenoGrossmannBetaetal.2022,
  author    = {Moreno, Eduardo and Großmann, Robert and Beta, Carsten and Alonso, Sergio},
  title     = {From single to collective motion of social amoebae},
  series = {Frontiers in physics},
  volume    = {9},
  journal   = {Frontiers in physics},
  publisher = {Frontiers Media},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {2296-424X},
  doi       = {10.3389/fphy.2021.750187},
  pages     = {17},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The coupling of the internal mechanisms of cell polarization to cell shape deformations and subsequent cell crawling poses many interdisciplinary scientific challenges. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to model the coupling of both processes, where one of the most successful methods relies on a phase field that encodes the morphology of the cell, together with the integration of partial differential equations that account for the polarization mechanism inside the cell domain as defined by the phase field. This approach has been previously employed to model the motion of single cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, a widely used model organism to study actin-driven motility and chemotaxis of eukaryotic cells. Besides single cell motility, Dictyostelium discoideum is also well-known for its collective behavior. Here, we extend the previously introduced model for single cell motility to describe the collective motion of large populations of interacting amoebae by including repulsive interactions between the cells. We performed numerical simulations of this model, first characterizing the motion of single cells in terms of their polarity and velocity vectors. We then systematically studied the collisions between two cells that provided the basic interaction scenarios also observed in larger ensembles of interacting amoebae. Finally, the relevance of the cell density was analyzed, revealing a systematic decrease of the motility with density, associated with the formation of transient cell clusters that emerge in this system even though our model does not include any attractive interactions between cells. This model is a prototypical active matter system for the investigation of the emergent collective dynamics of deformable, self-driven cells with a highly complex, nonlinear coupling of cell shape deformations, self-propulsion and repulsive cell-cell interactions. Understanding these self-organization processes of cells like their autonomous aggregation is of high relevance as collective amoeboid motility is part of wound healing, embryonic morphogenesis or pathological processes like the spreading of metastatic cancer cells.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{MoldenhawerMorenoSchindleretal.2022,
  author    = {Moldenhawer, Ted and Moreno, Eduardo and Schindler, Daniel and Flemming, Sven and Holschneider, Matthias and Huisinga, Wilhelm and Alonso, Sergio and Beta, Carsten},
  title     = {Spontaneous transitions between amoeboid and keratocyte-like modes of migration},
  series = {Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology},
  volume    = {10},
  journal   = {Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology},
  publisher = {Frontiers Media},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {2296-634X},
  doi       = {10.3389/fcell.2022.898351},
  pages     = {13},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The motility of adherent eukaryotic cells is driven by the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton. Despite the common force-generating actin machinery, different cell types often show diverse modes of locomotion that differ in their shape dynamics, speed, and persistence of motion. Recently, experiments in Dictyostelium discoideum have revealed that different motility modes can be induced in this model organism, depending on genetic modifications, developmental conditions, and synthetic changes of intracellular signaling. Here, we report experimental evidence that in a mutated D. discoideum cell line with increased Ras activity, switches between two distinct migratory modes, the amoeboid and fan-shaped type of locomotion, can even spontaneously occur within the same cell. We observed and characterized repeated and reversible switchings between the two modes of locomotion, suggesting that they are distinct behavioral traits that coexist within the same cell. We adapted an established phenomenological motility model that combines a reaction-diffusion system for the intracellular dynamics with a dynamic phase field to account for our experimental findings.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{PasemannFlemmingAlonsoetal.2021,
  author    = {Pasemann, Gregor and Flemming, Sven and Alonso, Sergio and Beta, Carsten and Stannat, Wilhelm},
  title     = {Diffusivity estimation for activator-inhibitor models},
  series = {Journal of nonlinear science},
  volume    = {31},
  journal   = {Journal of nonlinear science},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {New York},
  issn      = {0938-8974},
  doi       = {10.1007/s00332-021-09714-4},
  pages     = {34},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {A theory for diffusivity estimation for spatially extended activator-inhibitor dynamics modeling the evolution of intracellular signaling networks is developed in the mathematical framework of stochastic reaction-diffusion systems. In order to account for model uncertainties, we extend the results for parameter estimation for semilinear stochastic partial differential equations, as developed in Pasemann and Stannat (Electron J Stat 14(1):547-579, 2020), to the problem of joint estimation of diffusivity and parametrized reaction terms. Our theoretical findings are applied to the estimation of effective diffusivity of signaling components contributing to intracellular dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton in the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum.},
  language  = {en}
}