Mechanics of cell crawling by means of force-free cyclic motion

Abstract

The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the cell cyclically in time, together with periodic alternation of adhesive characters at the interface between the cell and the substrate. Here the key model parameters are the phase shifts between the elongation of the actuator and the alternation of the adhesion of the two elements. We emphasize that the phase shifts determine not only the efficiency of the crawling motion but also its direction.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Analytic results for the three-sphere swimmer at low Reynolds number
• Simple model of cell crawling
• A simple self-organized swimmer driven by molecular motors
• Elastic three-sphere microswimmer in a viscous fluid

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Spontaneous Spatiotemporal Ordering of Shape Oscillations Enhances Cell Migration
• Mathematical modeling for the synchronization of two interacting active rotors
• Simple mathematical model for a pairing-induced motion of active and passive particles
• Irreversibility of stochastic state transitions in Langevin systems with odd elasticity