Phenomenological approaches to collective behavior in epithelial cell migration

Abstract Collective cell migration in epithelial tissues resembles fluid-like behavior in time-lapse recordings. In the last years, hydrodynamic velocity fields in living matter have been studied intensely. The emergent properties were remarkably similar to phenomena known from active soft matter systems. Here, we review migration experiments of large cellular ensembles as well as of mesoscopic cohorts in micro-structured environments. Concepts such as diffusion, velocity correlations, swirl strength and polarization are metrics to quantify the cellular dynamics both in experiments as well as in computational simulations. We discuss challenges relating collective migration to single cell and oligocellular behavior as well as linking the phenotypic parameters to the underlying cytoskeleton dynamics and signaling networks. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Mechanobiology.