dictyNews Electronic Edition Volume 42, number 25 October 28, 2016 Please submit abstracts of your papers as soon as they have been accepted for publication by sending them to dicty@northwestern.edu or by using the form at http://dictybase.org/db/cgi-bin/dictyBase/abstract_submit. Back issues of dictyNews, the Dicty Reference database and other useful information is available at dictyBase - http://dictybase.org. Follow dictyBase on twitter: http://twitter.com/dictybase ========= Abstracts ========= Inference of the drivers of collective movement in two cell types: Dictyostelium and melanoma Elaine A. Ferguson, Jason Matthiopoulos, Robert H. Insall and Dirk Husmeier Royal Society Interface, in press Collective cell movement is a key component of many important biological processes, including wound healing, the immune response and the spread of cancers. To understand and influence these movements, we need to be able to identify and quantify the contribution of their different underlying mechanisms. Here, we define a set of six candidate model-formulated as advection- diffusion-reaction partial differential equationsóthat incorporate a range of cell movement drivers. We fitted these models to movement assay data from two different cell types: Dictyostelium discoideum and human melanoma. Model comparison using widely applicable information criterion suggested that movement in both of our study systems was driven primarily by a self-generated gradient in the concentration of a depletable chemical in the cellsí environment. For melanoma, there was also evidence that overcrowding influenced movement. These applications of model inference to determine the most likely drivers of cell movement indicate that such statistical techniques have potential to support targeted experimental work in increasing our understanding of collective cell movement in a range of systems. submitted by: Robert Insall [r.insall@beatson.gla.ac.uk] ============================================================== [End dictyNews, volume 42, number 25]