Evidence map›Paper›PMID 24850906›Full record

ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2014

How much information can be obtained from tracking the position of the leading edge in a scratch assay?

Stuart T Johnston, Matthew J Simpson, D L Sean McElwain

Open access · hybridAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
25citing papers in PubMed
6.1field-weighted citation impact, top 3% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

25 citing papers in PubMed, 79 citations in OpenAlex.

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  8. Predicting population extinction in lattice-based birth-death-movement models.Proceedings. Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2020
    Article
  9. Article
  10. In vitro cell migration quantification method for scratch assays.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019
    Article
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  19. Bursts of activity in collective cell migration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016
    Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Stuart T JohnstonMathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Matthew J SimpsonMathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia matthew.simpson@qut.edu.au.
D L Sean McElwainMathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Queensland University of Technology · AU

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Moving cell fronts are an essential feature of wound healing, development and disease. The rate at which a cell front moves is driven, in part, by the cell motility, quantified in terms of the cell diffusivity D, and the cell proliferation rate λ. Scratch assays are a commonly reported procedure used to investigate the motion of cell fronts where an initial cell monolayer is scratched, and the motion of the front is monitored over a short period of time, often less than 24 h. The simplest way of quantifying a scratch assay is to monitor the progression of the leading edge. Use of leading edge data is very convenient because, unlike other methods, it is non-destructive and does not require labelling, tracking or counting individual cells among the population. In this work, we study short-time leading edge data in a scratch assay using a discrete mathematical model and automated image analysis with the aim of investigating whether such data allow us to reliably identify D and λ. Using a naive calibration approach where we simply scan the relevant region of the (D, λ) parameter space, we show that there are many choices of D and λ for which our model produces indistinguishable short-time leading edge data. Therefore, without due care, it is impossible to estimate D and λ from this kind of data. To address this, we present a modified approach accounting for the fact that cell motility occurs over a much shorter time scale than proliferation. Using this information, we divide the duration of the experiment into two periods, and we estimate D using data from the first period, whereas we estimate λ using data from the second period. We confirm the accuracy of our approach using in silico data and a new set of in vitro data, which shows that our method recovers estimates of D and λ that are consistent with previously reported values except that that our approach is fast, inexpensive, non-destructive and avoids the need for cell labelling and cell counting.

Indexed as

Models, Biological3T3 CellsAnimalsCell AggregationCell MovementCells, CulturedComputer SimulationContusionsFibroblastsMiceModels, StatisticalSkinWound Healingcancercell motilitycell proliferationedge detectionscratch assay

Identifiers

PMID24850906
PMCPMC4208362
OpenAlexW2148238974

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.