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CPP: Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 7: SYMPOSIUM: Polymer networks and beyond: From molecular structure to materials and biological functions II

CPP 7.5: Vortrag

Samstag, 5. März 2005, 12:15–12:30, TU C243

Cellular structure formation in elastic environments — •Ulrich S. Schwarz and Ilka B. Bischofs — Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Theory Division, 14424 Potsdam

The behaviour of adhering cells is strongly influenced by the chemical, topographical and mechanical properties of the surfaces they attach to. Recent experiments suggest that due to active mechanosensing through cell-matrix contacts, cells position and orient in favor of maximal effective stiffness in their environment. This behaviour leads to long-ranged elastic interactions of cells, which can be derived from an extremum principle in linear elasticity theory. Our theory predicts cellular structure formation in elastic environments as a function of cell density and elastic moduli. For intermediate cell densities, we predict that cells align in strings. The effective string-string interaction can be shown to be short-ranged because the cellular traction patterns inside the strings screen each other. For high cell densities, we predict isotropic ring-like structures for incompressible media and nematic string-like structures for compressible media.