sEMTor – The EMT simulator
Developed by Steffen Plunder, see the companion article:
Modelling variability and heterogeneity of EMT scenarios highlights nuclear positioning and protrusions as
main drivers of extrusion
Steffen Plunder, Cathy Danesin, Bruno Glise, Marina A Ferreira, Sara Merino Aceituno and Eric Theveneau, 2023,
bioRxiv.
An interactive, agent-based model to simulate epithelial-to-mesenchymal transitions-like events in a
pseudostratified epithelium.
The simulation has epithelial
control cells (green)
and
experimental cells (red).
Experimental cells can be instructed to perform some or all of the following events in various orders:
-
→ A Loss of apical adhesion (detachment from neighboring apical
points).
-
→ B Loss of basal adhesion (detachment from basal line).
-
→ S Relaxation of straightness (apical/basal points and nuclei are
no longer forced to align).
-
→ P
Protrusive activities (seek-and grab behavior of basal points in direction of the polarity, typically basally,
can only occur if B is part of the selected EMT-like scenario).
Note: Our scientific conclusions from the model are based on statistics obtained from thousands of simulations
of the model shown below. Please note that in some instances, single simulations can differ substantially from
the average behavior.