A framework for modeling cells spreading, motility and the relocation of proteins on advecting lipid membranes

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multi-physics modeling framework to understand cell spreading, motility, and protein relocation on advecting lipid membranes, addressing the complex, non-reproducible biological responses to external cues.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-physics framework specifically designed to model cell dynamics and protein relocation on lipid membranes, capturing biological complexity.

Findings

Framework successfully models cell spreading and motility.

Accounts for protein relocation on advecting membranes.

Addresses non-reproducible cellular responses.

Abstract

The response of cells during spreading and motility is dictated by several multi-physics events, which are triggered by extracellular cues and occur at different time-scales. For this sake, it is not completely appropriate to provide a cell with classical notions of the mechanics of materials, as for "rheology" or "mechanical response". Rather, a cell is an alive system with constituents that show a reproducible response, as for the {\em{contractility}} for single stress fibers or for the mechanical response of a biopolymer actin network, but that reorganize in response to external cues in a non-exactly-predictable and reproducible way. Aware of such complexity, in this note we aim at formulating a multi-physics framework for modeling cells spreading and motility, accounting for the relocation of proteins on advecting lipid membranes.