Effect of substrate heterogeneity and topology on epithelial tissue growth dynamics

Abstract

Tissue growth kinetics and interface dynamics depend on the properties of the tissue environment and cell-cell interactions. In cellular environments, substrate heterogeneity and geometry arise from a variety factors, such as the structure of the extracellular matrix and nutrient concentration. We used the CellSim3D model, a kinetic cell division simulator, to investigate the growth kinetics and interface roughness dynamics of epithelial tissue growth on heterogeneous substrates with varying topologies. The results show that the presence of quenched disorder has a clear effect on the colony morphology and the roughness scaling of the interface in the moving interface regime. In a medium with quenched disorder, the tissue interface has a smaller interface roughness exponent, $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, and a larger growth exponent, $\ensuremath{\beta}$. The scaling exponents also depend on the topology of the substrate and cannot be categorized by well-known universality classes.