2012/11/30 by Shiladitya Banerjee, M. Cristina Marchetti · 41 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #3D Printing in Biomedical Research #Biology #Cell biology #Cellular Mechanics and Interactions #Classical mechanics #Composite material #Extracellular matrix #Geometry #Matrix (chemical analysis) #Mechanical engineering #Physics #Polysaccharides and Plant Cell Walls #Traction (geology) #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.CB
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/15/3/035015
published in New Journal of Physics 15(3), 035015 (IOP Publishing) · 12 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2013/02/16 · openalex publication_date 2013/03/12 · arxiv updated 2015/06/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present a minimal continuum model of strongly adhering cells as active contractile isotropic media and use the model for studying the effect of the geometry of the adhesion patch in controlling the spatial distribution of traction and cellular stresses. Activity is introduced as a contractile, hence negative, spatially homogeneous contribution to the pressure. The model shows that patterning of adhesion regions can be used to control traction stress distribution and yields several results consistent with experimental observations. Specifically, the cell spread area is found to increase with substrate stiffness and an analytic expression of the dependence is obtained for circular cells. The correlation between the magnitude of traction stresses and cell boundary curvature is also demonstrated and analyzed.