An In Vitro Nematic Model for Proliferating Cell Cultures

Confluent populations of elongated cells give rise to ordered patterns seen in nematic phase liquid crystals. We correlate cell elongation and intercellular distance with intercellular alignment using an amorphous spin glass model. We compare in vitro time-lapse imaging with Monte Carlo simulation results by framing a novel hard ellipses model in terms of Boltzmann statistics. Furthermore, we find a statistically distinct alignment energy at quasi-steady state among fibroblasts, smooth muscle cells, and pluripotent cell populations when cultured in vitro. These findings have important implications in both non-invasive clinical screening of the stem cell differentiation process and in relating shape parameters to coupling in active crystal systems such as nematic cell monolayers.