Emergent cell and tissue dynamics from subcellular modeling of active biomechanical processes

Cells and the tissues they form are not passive material bodies. Cells change their behavior in response to external biochemical and biomechanical cues. Behavioral changes, such as morphological deformation, proliferation and migration, are striking in many multicellular processes such as morphogene...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical biology 2011-08, Vol.8 (4), p.045007-045007
Main Authors: Sandersius, S A, Weijer, C J, Newman, T J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Animals
Biomechanical Phenomena
Cell Movement
Cell Physiological Phenomena
Epithelium - chemistry
Humans
Models, Biological
Morphogenesis
Viscosity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Cells and the tissues they form are not passive material bodies. Cells change their behavior in response to external biochemical and biomechanical cues. Behavioral changes, such as morphological deformation, proliferation and migration, are striking in many multicellular processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression. Cell-based modeling of these phenomena requires algorithms that can capture active cell behavior and their emergent tissue-level phenotypes. In this paper, we report on extensions of the subcellular element model to model active biomechanical subcellular processes. These processes lead to emergent cell and tissue level phenotypes at larger scales, including (i) adaptive shape deformations in cells responding to slow stretching, (ii) viscous flow of embryonic tissues, and (iii) streaming patterns of chemotactic cells in epithelial-like sheets. In each case, we connect our simulation results to recent experiments.
ISSN:1478-3975
1478-3975
DOI:10.1088/1478-3975/8/4/045007