Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 25: Cell Mechanics II
BP 25.4: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 20. März 2025, 10:30–10:45, H44
The positioning of stress fibers in contractile cells minimizes internal mechanical stress — •Valentin Wössner1,2, Lukas Riedel3,4, Dominic Kempf3, Falko Ziebert1,2, Peter Bastian3, and Ulrich S. Schwarz1,2,3 — 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany — 2BioQuant, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany — 3Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany — 4Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Stress fibers are contractile bundles of actin filaments found in the cytoskeleton of animal cells. They play crucial roles in force generation, mechanical adaptation, shape control and mechanosensing. While the physical description of single stress fibers is well-developed, much less is known about their spatial distribution on the level of whole cells. Here, we combine a finite element method for one-dimensional fibers embedded in a two-dimensional elastic bulk medium with dynamical rules for stress fiber formation based on genetic algorithms [1]. We postulate that their main goal is to achieve minimal mechanical stress in the bulk material with as few fibers as possible. We find that stress fibers typically run through the cell in a diagonal fashion and that they cross each other under biaxial stretch. In the future, our approach can be extended to three dimensions and to stress fibers with viscoelasticity.
[1] Riedel et al., J. Mech. Phys. Solids 195 (2025) 105950
Keywords: Continuum mechanics; Finite elements; Genetic algorithms