Rheological properties of brushes on cancerous epithelial cells under the influence of an external oscillatory force

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze how external oscillatory forces affect the rheological behavior of surface brushes on cancerous epithelial cells, providing insights into cell mechanics relevant to cancer research.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation model of cell surface brushes under oscillatory forces, revealing complex rheological behaviors relevant to cancer cell mechanics.

Findings

Viscosity profiles vary with brush length and force.

Friction coefficients depend on brush interactions and external forces.

Simulation results may inform experimental cancer cell studies.

Abstract

The rheological properties of brushes of different length on the surface of human epithelial cancerous cells are studied here by means of coarse grained numerical simulations, where the surface of the cell is subjected to an external oscillatory force acting on the plane of the cell surface. We model explicitly the tip of an atomic force microscope and the cancerous cell as a surface covered by brushes of different length, and take into account the interactions of the brush chains with the tip and with each other, leading to complex rheological behavior as displayed by the profiles of viscosity and the friction coefficient of this complex system. We comment briefly on how these findings can help in the experimental effort to understand the nature of the cancer growth in human epithelial cells.