| Abstract: |
| The cytoskeleton is a cellular skeleton found inside the cytoplasm of fast moving live cells, and in particular inside cancer cells. The front of the cytoskeleton, also known as lamellipodium, is the driving mechanism of cell motility and is mostly comprised of long double helix polymers of actin protein, termed actin-filaments. The actin-filaments polymerize/depolymerize and exhibit a series of mechanical properties such as elasticity, friction with the substrate, crosslink binding, repulsion, myosin-driven contractility, nucleation, fragmentation, capping and more.
Our approach is to employ the previously developed Filament Based Lamelipodium Model (FBLM) and the corresponding Finite Element Method (FEM) to model and simulate the motility of cells as an emerging property of the dynamics of the actin-filament network.
In more detail, we embed the FBLM-FEM on an active environment of variable chemical and adhesive properties. Moreover, we include a number of cells and the interactions between them i.e. collisions and adhesions. Finally, we present our results on the constructing cell clusters and monolayers. |
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