Biomechanical Cell Model by Liquid-Crystal Elastomers

In this work, a soft matter cell model is proposed to simulate the cellular cytoskeleton network and motions of intermediate filaments during cell contact and adhesion, in an attempt to explain mechanical information exchange between cells and their extracellular environment. In particular, the cell is modeled as liquid-crystal elastomers. A microscale adhesive model has been introduced to describe the interaction between receptors and ligands. A Lagrange-type mesh-free Galerkin formulation and related computational algorithms for the proposed cell and adhesive contact model have been developed and implemented. A comparison study with experimental data has been conducted to validate the parameters of the cell model. By using the soft matter cell model, the soft adhesive contact process between cells and extracellular substrates with different stiffness has been simulated. The simulation shows that cell motion includes gliding as well as rolling forward along the substrate during the spreading process. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.