When you cut yourself, a mass migration begins inside your body: Skin cells flood by the thousands toward the site of the wound, where they will soon lay down fresh layers of protective tissue.
In a new study, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have taken an important step toward unraveling the drivers behind this collective behavior. The team has developed an equation learning technique that might one day help scientists grasp how the body rebuilds skin, and could potentially inspire new therapies to accelerate wound healing.
“Learning the rules for how individual cells respond to the proximity and relative motion of other cells is critical to understanding why cells migrate into a wound,” said David Bortz, professor of applied mathematics at CU Boulder and senior author of the new study.
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