Crawling in a fluid

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to fluid flow is proposed and solved for a spherical shape. The swimming speed is extracted in terms of key parameters. We analytically find super- and subcritical bifurcations from a non-motile to a motile state and also spontaneous polarity oscillations that arise from a Hopf bifurcation. Relaxing the spherical assumption, the obtained shapes show appealing trends.

References in corpus (5)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
• Pushing off the walls: a mechanism of cell motility in confinement
• Spontaneous contractility--mediated cortical flow generates cell migration in 3-dimensional environments
• Spontaneous division and motility in active nematic droplets
• A minimal physical model captures the shapes of crawling cells

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• Universal Thinning of Liquid Filaments under Dominant Surface Forces
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• Spontaneous polarization and locomotion of an active particle with surface-mobile enzymes
• Colliding cells: when active segments behave as active particles
• Spontaneous chiralization of polar active colloids
• A Reduced Model for a Phoretic Swimmer
• Active gel segment behaving as an active particle
• Cell motility as an energy minimization process
• A cell membrane model that reproduces cortical flow-driven cell migration and collective movement