Elastic Interactions of Cells
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-07 v1 Materials Science
Cell Behavior
Abstract
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ( with distance ) and depend sensitively on elastic constants, geometry and cellular orientations. On elastic substrates, the elastic interaction is similar to that of electric quadrupoles in two dimensions and for dense systems leads to aggregation with herringbone order on a cellular scale. Free and clamped surfaces of samples of finite size introduce attractive and repulsive corrections, respectively, which vary on the macroscopic scale. Our theory predicts cell reorientation on stretched elastic substrates.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0201110,
title = {Elastic Interactions of Cells},
author = {U. S. Schwarz and S. A. Safran},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0201110},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Revtex, 6 pages, 2 Postscript files included, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett