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Inferring three-body interactions in cell migration dynamics

Agathe Jouneau1, Tom Brandstätter2,3, Bram Hoogland2, Joachim O. Rädler1,*, and Chase P. Broedersz2,†

  • *Contact author: raedler@lmu.de
  • †Contact author: c.p.broedersz@vu.nl
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033310 – Published 14 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/xsg5-cb6l

Abstract

In active matter and living matter, such as clusters of migrating cells, collective dynamics emerges from the underlying interactions. A common assumption of theoretical descriptions of collective cell migration is that these interactions are pairwise additive. It remains unclear, however, whether the dynamics of groups of cells is solely determined by pairwise interactions or whether higher-order interaction terms come into play. To investigate this question, we use time-lapse microscopy to record the dynamics of three cells interacting together in a linear three-site geometry. We collect a large number of cellular trajectories and develop an inference scheme to infer both pairwise and potential three-body cell-cell interactions. Our results reveal evidence of three-body interactions in one of the two cell lines tested. However, these three-body interactions only introduce minor corrections to the overall dynamics. Our work provides a methodology to infer the existence of three-body interactions from trajectory data and supports the commonly assumed pairwise nature of cell-cell interactions.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 033310– Published 14 September, 2026
  • Received 9 January 2026
  • Accepted 9 July 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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