• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.38-44
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• 2018

Cellular jamming phenomenon, defined as a kinetic arrest, is a commonly observed event in dense cell aggregates in epithelial tissues. Cells lose their motility when the density of the cell population becomes too high. Yet, not much is known about how the jamming occurs and how it influences individual cells in the population. In this study, we investigated the mechanisms during the formation of the jammed state by visualizing various dynamic components such as velocity, traction, and intercellular stress. The visualized properties exhibited interrelated features in similar time domains that can be categorized into specific stages, namely migrating, transitional and steady state. During the migrating stage, cells generated spatially correlated tractions and migrations at the collective migration step and lost these properties becoming a transitional stage. These stepwise analyses presented correlative components which are expected to adjust for explaining the detailed mechanisms of cellular jamming.