CHAPTER 5
The Locomotory Behaviour of Cells
M. A B E R C R O M B I E
Department of Z
00
^
0
^) University College London, England
I. Introduction
^TL
II. The Individual Cell
A. Mechanism of movement
B. Stimulus and response
j '
C. Unoriented responses
D. Oriented responses
E. Starting and stopping
III. Cell Populations
^
A. Dispersive behaviour
j
B. Associative behaviour
j ~
C. Trends of direction
References
I. I N T R O D U C T I O N
The ability to move by means of their own "amoeboid" activity is a
very general feature of animal cells, though it is apparently lacking
from the cells of higher plants, even from their naked protoplasts. Such
locomotion is a morphogenetic mechanism of fundamental importance
to animals. It is conspicuous in the embryo, and much mapping of mass
movements has been done there; mass movement is conspicuous too in
most processes of wound healing; and it may well be that throughout
the general growth of an animal, and during any specially active period
of new tissue formation such as compensatory hypertrophy, minor
locomotory shifts of cells are continually in operation (Abercrombie,
1957b), adjusting the fine-grain pattern of the tissues to accommodate
mitosis and cell-death, which often appear to be rather random
processes.
Almost all this activity within the organism is inaccessible to direct
observation and is analysed experimentally with difficulty. In tissue
culture, cell locomotion is commonly active. The composition of many
liquid media, the large amount of cell-free space often available, the
dissociation of cells from their normal relationships produced by some