Data-driven simulations elucidate how lymphocyte motility behaviors influence cell-cell interactions within germinal centers

Slow B-cell motility behaviors (B5–B7) paired with fast T-cell motility behaviors (B1–B4) maximize the emergent number of unique B cell interactions per T cell in germinal center simulations.

• Why it matters: Baseline motility is known to affect germinal center responses, but sparse labeling and heterogeneous movement have limited quantitative links between measured motility and B–T interactions.
• What they did: Using intravital imaging, the framework clustered lymphocyte tracks into seven motility behaviors (B1–B7) and fed them into a validated 3D agent-based model to predict B–T interaction outcomes.
• The result: The model predicts that the B5–B7 and B1–B4 pairing yields the highest unique B cell interactions per T cell within fixed observation volumes, supporting a surveillance role for differential motility.

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