Emergence of traveling waves and their stability in a free boundary model of cell motility

Abstract

We introduce a two-dimensional Hele-Shaw type free boundary model for motility of eukaryotic cells on substrates. The key ingredients of this model are the Darcy law for overdamped motion of the cytoskeleton gel (active gel) coupled with advection-diffusion equation for myosin density leading to elliptic-parabolic Keller-Segel system. This system is supplemented with Hele-Shaw type boundary conditions: Young-Laplace equation for pressure and continuity of velocities. We first show that radially symmetric stationary solutions become unstable and bifurcate to traveling wave solutions at a critical value of the total myosin mass. Next we perform linear stability analysis of these traveling wave solutions and identify the type of bifurcation (sub- or supercritical). Our study sheds light on the mathematics underlying instability/stability transitions in this model. Specifically, we show that these transitions occur via generalized eigenvectors of the linearized operator.