A random graph model of density thresholds in swarming cells

Abstract

Abstract Swarming behaviour is a type of bacterial motility that has been found to be dependent on reaching a local density threshold of cells. With this in mind, the process through which cell‐to‐cell interactions develop and how an assembly of cells reaches collective motility becomes increasingly important to understand. Additionally, populations of cells and organisms have been modelled through graphs to draw insightful conclusions about population dynamics on a spatial level. In the present study, we make use of analogous random graph structures to model the formation of large chain subgraphs, representing interactions between multiple cells, as a random graph Markov process. Using numerical simulations and analytical results on how quickly paths of certain lengths are reached in a random graph process, metrics for intercellular interaction dynamics at the swarm layer that may be experimentally evaluated are proposed.