Diversity in emergent cell locomotion from the coupling cytosolic and cortical Marangoni flows with reaction-diffusion dynamics

Abstract

Cell migration is a fundamental process underlying the survival and function of both unicellular and multicellular organisms. Crawling motility in eukaryotic cells arises from cyclic protrusion and retraction driven by the cytoskeleton, whose organization is regulated by reaction-diffusion (RD) dynamics of Rho GTPases between the cytosol and the cortex. These dynamics generate spatial membrane patterning and establish front-rear polarity through the coupling of biochemical signalling and mechanical feedback. We develop a cross-scale mean-field framework that integrates RD signalling with cytosolic and cortical hydrodynamics to capture emergent cellular locomotion. Our model reproduces diverse experimentally observed shape and motility phenotypes with small parameter changes, indicating that these behaviours correspond to self-organized limit cycles. Phase-space analysis reveals that coupling to both cytosolic flow and spatially varying surface tension is essential to recover the full spectrum of motility modes, providing a theoretical foundation for understanding amoeboid migration.