Berlin 2024 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 9: Poster Session Ib
BP 9.10: Poster
Montag, 18. März 2024, 18:00–20:30, Poster D
Modeling durotaxis in living cells on alternating substrate stiffness: a boltzmann approach — •Mathis Grelier1, Carlos Ureña martin2, Mark Schvartzman2, and Ana-Sunčana Smith1,3 — 1PULS Group, Institute for Theoretical Physics and Interdisciplinary Center for Nanostructured Films (IZNF), Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), 91058 Erlangen, Germany — 2Department of Materials Engineering and Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel — 3Group of Computational Life Sciences, Division of Physical Chemistry, Ruder Bošković Institute, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Understanding cellular responses to substrate stiffness is crucial for unraveling fundamental principles of cell spreading and migration. Our study investigates durotaxis in HeLa cells by conducting experiments on substrates featuring alternating lines of distinct stiffness. To describe the cell spreading, we introduce a stochastic model grounded in a Boltzmann distribution. This comprehensive framework considers different energy contributions governing the stochastic spread of cells over line boundaries. We observe a higher alignment of cells along the lines when the width of the softest lines increases. This behavior arises due to the increasing energy expenditure incurred by the cell when attempting to bridge across the softer substrate. The model successfully captures the probability distribution of cell shapes and alignment of the experiments, providing a quantitative framework for predicting the biomechanics of cell migration over material of different stiffness.