Brownian-like deviation of neighboring cells in the early embryogenesis of the zebrafish.

We investigate cell trajectories during zebrafish early embryogenesis based on 3D+time 2-photon microscopy imaging data. To remove the collective flow motion and focus on fluctuations, we analyze the deviations of pairs of neighboring cells. These deviations resemble Brownian motion and reveal different behaviors between pairs containing daughter cells generated by cell division and other pairs of neighboring cells. This observation justifies a common practice of using white noise fluctuations in modeling cell movement.