2019/12/12 by Anthonisen, Madeleine, Grutter, Peter
#Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1912.05735
Working in the framework of morphoelasticity, we develop a model of neurite growth in response to elastic deformation. We decompose the applied stretch into an elastic component and a growth component, and adopt an observationally-motivated model for the growth law. We then compute the best-fit model parameters by fitting to force-extension curves from measurements of constant-speed uniaxial deformations of mechanically-induced neurites of rat hippocampal neurons. We find a time constant for the growth law of 0.009~s-1, similar to the diffusion rate of actin in a cell. Our results characterize the kinematics of neurite growth and establish new limits on the growth rate of neurites.