Multifractal dynamics in confluent cell monolayers

Hsiang-Ying Chen^1*

¹Department of Physics and Center for Complex Systems, National Central University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan

* Presenter:Hsiang-Ying Chen, email:hsiangying1993@gmail.com

Confluent cell monolayers have become a modeled system to study active turbulence, where cells drive multiscale cooperative motion through nonlinear mutual interactions and self-propelling. However, the multifractal nature of turbulence in cell monolayers remains underexplored. In this work, multifractal dynamics in human bronchial epithelial cell (HBEC) monolayers are experimentally investigated through structure-function analysis. With increasing time, cell monolayer exhibits turbulent-like motion with dynamical slowing due to cell proliferation. It is evidenced that the averaged power spectra of longitudinal velocity exhibit power law decays as time increases. The velocity increments exhibit non-Gaussian distributions, characterized by high kurtosis, indicating the presence of intermittent bursts in velocity fluctuations. Scaling analysis of the structure function for the q-th moment of velocity increments reveals nonlinear relationships between the scaling exponent Sq(r) and the q-th moment during monolayer densification. These findings suggest the presence of multifractal behaviors in cell monolayers.

Keywords: Active matter, Cell monolayer, Turbulence, Multifractality