Plithotaxis

{{short description|Tendency of cells to migrate along the local axis of principal stress}} thumb|right|Animation of plithotaxis in action

In cellular biology, '''plithotaxis''' ({{ety|el|''{{linktext|πλήΘος}}'' (plíthos)|crowd, swarm}}) is the tendency for each individual cell within a monolayer to migrate along the local orientation of the maximal principal stress, or equivalently, minimal intercellular shear stress.<ref name="NM2011">Tambe, D.T., Hardin, C., Angelini, T.E., Rajendran, K., Park, C.Y., Serra-Picamal, X., Zhou, E.H., Zaman, M.H., Butler, J.P., Weitz, D.A., Fredberg JJ, Trepat, X, Collective cell guidance by cooperative intercellular forces. '''''Nature Materials''''',10(6), 469-475, 2011, {{doi|10.1038/nmat3025}}.</ref><ref>Gov, N. Cell mechanics: Moving under peer pressure. '''''Nature Materials''''', 10(6), 412-414, 2011, {{doi|10.1038/nmat3036}}.</ref><ref>Trepat, X, Fredberg, JJ. Plithotaxis and emergent dynamics in collective cellular migration. '''''Trends in Cell Biology''''' - 23 July 2011, {{doi|10.1016/j.tcb.2011.06.006}}.</ref> Plithotaxis requires force transmission across many cell-cell junctions and therefore is an emergent property of the cell group.

Plithotaxis is found to hold at the level of both a subcellular grid point and an individual cell of a confluent monolayer, and the stresses must be tensile.<ref name="BBRC2020">Patel, N.G., Nguyen, A., Xu, N., Ananthasekar, S., Alvarez, D.F., Stevens, T., Tambe, D.T., Unleashing shear: Role of intercellular traction and cellular moments in collective cell migration. '''''Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications''''' - February 2020, {{doi|10.1016/j.bbrc.2019.11.048}}.</ref>

==See also== * Chemotaxis * Durotaxis * Haptotaxis * Mechanotaxis

==References== {{reflist}}

Category:Cell biology Category:Physiology Category:Signal transduction Category:Emergence