ArticleNature ecology & evolution2018
Collective motion conceals fitness differences in crowded cellular populations.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Genetically homogeneous sector morphologies emerge from anisotropic colony growth.Physical review. E · 2026Article
- Efficient mathematical methodology to determine multistep mutant burden in spatially growing cell populations.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Extrachromosomal DNA: shaping the evolutionary dynamics of cancer.Trends in cancer · 2025Review
- Uptake and leakage rates differentially shape community arrangement and composition of microbial consortia.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities.ISME communications · 2025Review
- SynonymousNAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Interplay between morphology and competition in two-dimensional colony expansion.Physical review. E · 2023Article
- Evaporation-induced hydrodynamics control plasmid transfer during surface-associated microbial growth.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2023Article
- Antibiotic resistance in bacterial communities.Current opinion in microbiology · 2023Review
- Proliferating active matter.Nature reviews. Physics · 2023Review
- Modelling evolution at the boundaries of solid tumours.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Impact of crowding on the diversity of expanding populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Evolutionary rescue of resistant mutants is governed by a balance between radial expansion and selection in compact populations.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Morphological instability and roughening of growing 3D bacterial colonies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Self-consistent dispersal puts tight constraints on the spatiotemporal organization of species-rich metacommunities.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Population genetics in microchannels.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Spatial structure impacts adaptive therapy by shaping intra-tumoral competition.Communications medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Many cellular populations are tightly packed, such as microbial colonies and biofilms, or tissues and tumours in multicellular organisms. The movement of one cell in these crowded assemblages requires motion of others, so that cell displacements are correlated over many cell diameters. Whenever movement is important for survival or growth, these correlated rearrangements could couple the evolutionary fate of different lineages. However, little is known about the interplay between mechanical forces and evolution in dense cellular populations. Here, by tracking slower-growing clones at the expanding edge of yeast colonies, we show that the collective motion of cells prevents costly mutations from being weeded out rapidly. Joint pushing by neighbouring cells generates correlated movements that suppress the differential displacements required for selection to act. This mechanical screening of fitness differences allows slower-growing mutants to leave more descendants than expected under non-mechanical models, thereby increasing their chance for evolutionary rescue. Our work suggests that, in crowded populations, cells cooperate with surrounding neighbours through inevitable mechanical interactions. This effect has to be considered when predicting evolutionary outcomes, such as the emergence of drug resistance or cancer evolution.
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Registered trials
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.