How can we modeling how crawling cells move in circles, oscillate, and follow electrical fields? First paper from first grad student in the group Ify Nwogbaga answers this! arxiv.org/abs/2204.01589

Ify put together a coarse-grained model for how keratocytes can develop complex motility patterns in an electric field. Key element is the elongated shape of the cell. Builds on earlier work showing coupling between cell shape and velocity can create circular motion.

Ify worked out the phase diagram: when do you get cells crawling in circles, when do they do a persistent random walk, or some combination (like the movie above).