Contractile stresses in cohesive cell layers on finite-thickness substrates

Abstract

Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for the length scale controlling the spatial variation of stresses in terms of cell and substrate parameters that describes the crossover between the thin and thick substrate limits. Our model is an important step towards a unified theoretical description of the dependence of traction forces on cell or colony size, acto-myosin contractility, substrate depth and stiffness, and strength of focal adhesions, and makes experimentally testable predictions.

5 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Scaling of Traction Forces with Size of Cohesive Cell Colonies
• Elastic interactions of active cells with soft materials
• Force localization in contracting cell layers
• Substrate rigidity deforms and polarizes active gels
• Effect of Poisson ratio on cellular structure formation

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Physics of adherent cells
• Cadherin-Based Intercellular Adhesions Organize Epithelial Cell-Matrix Traction Forces
• Inference of internal stress in a cell monolayer
• Mechanics of motility initiation and motility arrest in crawling cells
• Role of Substrate Stiffness in Tissue Spreading: Wetting Transition and Tissue Durotaxis
• Controlling cell-matrix traction forces by extracellular geometry
• Contact inhibition of locomotion and mechanical cross-talk between cell-cell and cell-substrate adhesion determines the pattern of junctional tension in epithelial cell aggregates
• Polymorphism and bistability in adherent cells
• Multiphase Field Model of Cells on a Substrate: From 3D to 2D
• Differential cellular contractility as a mechanism for stiffness sensing
• Hydrodynamic instabilities, waves and turbulence in spreading epithelia