Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 7: Poster 1
BP 7.22: Poster
Monday, September 5, 2022, 18:00–20:00, P1
Brownian dynamics simulations of deformable cells in ordered polymer networks — •Jan Timo Bachmann1,2 and Andreas Zöttl2 — 1TU Darmstadt, Germany — 2University of Vienna, Austria
Various Cells migrate in different environments and in response to different stimuli. Cell migration may include the navigation and locomotion through complex environments, as in the case of Leukocyte migration where cells have to translocate through small pores in the extracellular matrix (ECM) by squeezing their cell body considerably. To investigate the influence of pores in the ECM on cell velocity and deformation we study a simplified model of an externally driven deformable cell moving through ordered polymer networks by means of Brownian dynamics simulations.
The cell velocity shows oscillatory behaviour with minima before and maxima after each network pore. The speed maxima can exceed the terminal velocity of the respective cell in a network-free fluid, indicating that in the squeezing process elastic interaction energy with the network is utilized to locally enhance the cell speed. The mean velocity through the network as a function of the bending modulus of the cell surface bending potential shows a non-linear unimodal curve. We further show how the interplay of pore size and cell elasticity determines the cell velocity.