| dc.description.abstract | Cell migration in multicellular organism participate embryonic development, wound healing, and several other important biological processes. In the beginning of migration, the cell polarize itself and then repeatedly extends its protrusion and retracts its rear tail, through motor driving, cytoskeleton polymerization (depolymerization), and the formation (releasing) of new front (old back) focal adhesions on the substrate, called fibroblast motion. Most of the studies focused on the process of polarization and protrusion, but the generic mechanism of tail retraction is still unclear. In our work, this elusive issue is experimentally investigated in vitro using MDCK cells on the fibronectin coated substrate, and the cytoskeleton structure of cells are labeled in live and fixed staining. On the basis of our analysis, the retraction tail exhibits stick-slip motion which is caused by tread-milling mechanism and releasing of focal adhesions respectively. Base on morphology, those tails can be classified into fat and narrow types. During the slipping motion, the shape of narrow tails exist bulging, wiggling, drifting, and breaking events, which imply the uneven distribution along the tail, and viscoelastic property. The fluorescence actin staining shows the retracting structure of tail, and jamming events of intercellular transportation. Finally, we propose that the different morphology evolutions during cell tail retraction are dominated by the jamming of inner material, and relatively decomposition rate of focal adhesions and actin filament bundles. | en_US |