Rounding of aggregates of biological cells: Experiments and simulations

The influence of surface tension and size on rounding of cell aggregates is studied using chick embryonic cells and numerical simulations based on the cellular Potts model. Our results show exponential relaxation in both cases as verified in previous studies using 2D Hydra cell aggregates. The relaxation time decreases with higher surface tension as expected from hydrodynamics laws. However, it increases faster than linearly with aggregate size. The results provide an additional support to the validity of the cellular Potts model for non-equilibrium situations and indicate that aggregate shape relaxation is not governed by the hydrodynamics of viscous liquids. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.