Chemo-mechanical model of a cell as a stochastic active gel

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic chemo-mechanical model of a cell as an active gel, linking cell shape fluctuations to mechanical environment and energy metabolism, and successfully explains cell migration behaviors.

Contribution

It presents a novel coupled stochastic framework integrating active gel mechanics with cell metabolism, capturing shape fluctuations and migration dynamics.

Findings

Cell shape fluctuations depend on mechanical constraints.

The model reproduces different migration regimes.

Long-term cell motion is effectively diffusive.

Abstract

While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we present a framework that couples an active gel model of the cell mechanical scaffold with the complex cell metabolic system stochastically delivering the chemical energy needed to sustain an active stress in the scaffold. Our closure assumption setting the magnitude of the fluctuations is that the chemo-mechanical free energy of the cell is controlled at a target homeostatic value. Our model rationalizes the experimental observation that the cell shape fluctuations depend on the mechanical environment that constraints the cell. We apply our framework to the simple case of a cell migrating on a one dimensional track to successfully capture the different regimes of the cell mean square displacement along the track as well as the magnitude of the long time scale effective diffusive motion of the cell.