Active Deformable Cells Undergo Cell Shape Transition Associated with Percolation of Topological Defects

Abstract: Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations for the collective dynamics of cells with arbitral cell deformations akin to mesenchymal, ameboid, and epithelial cells in a non-confluent situation need high computational costs and are still challenging. Here we propose a new method that allows us to study significantly larger numbers of cells than existing methods. Using the method, we investigated the densely packed active cell population interacting via excluded volume interactions, and discovered the emergence of two fluid phases in deformable cell populations, a soft-fluid phase with drastically deformed cell shapes and a fluid phase with circular cell shapes. The transition between these two phases is characterized by the percolation of topological defects, which is experimentally testable.