The program also allowed the researchers to address
aspects of cell behavior that emerge from vast numbers of interacting factors.
At the
core of this cell behavior is how the loss of that single gene changes activation levels of dozens of other genes, suppressing genes associated with metastatic disease and increasing activity of genes linked to normal tissue.
«We came up with a way to derive a
model of cell behavior, but the approach is complicated and slow, and it is limited in the number of variables that it can track — it can't be scaled to more complicated systems,» Wikswo says.
Manning believes that cell jamming likely provides an overarching mechanical explanation for
many of the cell behaviors involved in cancer, including extrusion.