Fig 2. The Cahn-Hilliard simulations reproduce the biological cell segregation experiments of Méhes et al. [20].

The segregation indices γ_i(t) for the two experiments PFK (dark red) with EPC (dark green) and HaCaT (dark blue) with EPC within the observed time interval 50–1000 min match the segregation indices predicted by the Cahn-Hilliard simulation (lines with corresponding brighter colors, dashed lines for PFK with EPC and dotted lines for HaCaT with EPC). Within the given time interval (grey box in top panel displayed again in bottom panel), the segregation indices of the Cahn-Hilliard simulation decay algebraically with exponent 1/4 (black dotted line) rather than 1/3 (black dashed line), which implies that the segregation process is in an intermittent regime of fluid segregation, see text for details. By using a mapping from the cellular automaton model to the Cahn-Hilliard model, see Materials and methods, parameters are set analogous to the parameters used in Fig 1 except for the mobility constant D, which is fitted to $D=36\mu {\text{m}}^2/\text{min}$ for the mixture of PFK with EPC and $D=18\mu {\text{m}}^2/\text{min}$ for the mixture of HaCaT with EPC. Snapshots of the cell mixtures at the points marked with crosses labeled C, E and D, F are displayed in Fig 3. Note, that the Cahn-Hilliard model is shown after the settling process took place, see Fig E in S1 Text.