Speaker
Prof.
Lene Oddershede
(Niels Bohr Institute)
Description
In healthy blood vessels with a laminar blood flow, the
endothelial cell division rate is low, only sufficient to
replace apoptotic cells. The division rate is significantly
increased during embryonic development and in unhealthy
endothelium with halted or turbulent blood flows. Cells in a
tissue are connected and their motility highly correlated.
Here, we investigate the long-range dynamics induced by cell
division in an endothelial monolayer under non-flow
conditions, mimicking the conditions during vessel formation
or healing around blood clots. We demonstrate that a cell
division induces a long-range ordered pattern of vortices in
the monolayer. Two pairs of primary vortices arise adjacent
to the dividing cell, and eight pairs of secondary and
tertiary vortices appear several cell diameters away. The
occurrence of ordered vortices is surprising considering the
system's low Reynolds number and may be crucial for
embryonic development and healing of endothelial tissue.
