ArticleScience advances2026
Trade-off between branching and polarity controls decision-making during cell migration.
Article in Science advances, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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.
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.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Kinemomics: spatiotemporal morphodynamic mapping of ventricular kinematic subpopulations in organotypic fetal heart slices.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Real-time characterisation of microbe-induced inflammation using a novel zebrafish larval corneal injury and infection model.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Modelling chemotaxis of branched cells in complex environments provides insights into immune cell navigation.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Vessel-on-a-Chip to Study Vascular Endothelial Inflammation.Current protocols · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Motile cells often face microenvironmental constraints and obstacles that force them to extend multiple protrusions. However, the analysis of shape dynamics during directional decision-making has been restricted to single junctions. Here, we combined live-cell imaging and a coarse-grained model to study the migratory behavior of highly branched cells while simultaneously facing several junctions. The theoretical model predicts that the choice of a new direction is determined by the competition between the cellular protrusions in the form of seesaw oscillations. We found that macrophages and endothelial cells display different regimes moving on hexagonal networks, despite sharing a mesenchymal (i.e., adhesion-dependent) migratory strategy. The model describes the motility of both cell types and reveals a trade-off between branching and speed: Having many protrusions allows local microenvironmental exploration for directional cues, but long-range migration efficiency improves with fewer protrusions. Collectively, our data highlight the relevance and provide insights for the regulation of shape dynamics during cell navigation in complex geometries.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.