When pairs of cells collide, which one wins? The faster cell, the more adherent, the more protrusive? Something else? Or is the outcome just unpredictable? Answers in a new preprint by student Pedrom Zadeh from the group: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Pedrom built a model of cells crawling on an adhesive substrate, starting from including some basic physics - surface tension and adhesion to the substrate - and then adding protrusion at the front. Changing these properties changes cell shape, speed, etc:

Experimental work from @shreyanshjain8 @bladoux suggests that when cells collide, it's cells with a smaller contact angle to the substrate and cells that are faster that are more likely to keep their direction (win) nature.com/articles/s4156…