Collectively stabilizing and orienting posterior migratory forces disperses cell clusters in vivo

Individual cells detach from cohesive ensembles during development and can inappropriately separate in disease. Although much is known about how cells separate from epithelia, it remains unclear how cells disperse from clusters lacking apical–basal polarity, a hallmark of advanced epithelial cancers. Here, using live imaging of the developmental migration program of Drosophila primordial germ cells (PGCs), we show that cluster dispersal is accomplished by stabilizing and orienting migratory forces. PGCs utilize a G protein coupled receptor (GPCR), Tre1, to guide front-back migratory polarity radially from the cluster toward the endoderm. Posteriorly positioned myosin-dependent contractile forces pull on cell–cell contacts until cells release. Tre1 mutant cells migrate randomly with transient enrichment of the force machinery but fail to separate, indicating a temporal contractile force threshold for detachment. E-cadherin is retained on the cell surface during cell separation and augmenting cell–cell adhesion does not impede detachment. Notably, coordinated migration improves cluster dispersal efficiency by stabilizing cell–cell interfaces and facilitating symmetric pulling. We demonstrate that guidance of inherent migratory forces is sufficient to disperse cell clusters under physiological settings and present a paradigm for how such events could occur across development and disease.