Phase field approach for modeling intracellular dynamics

TL;DR

This paper presents a phase field method for modeling intracellular diffusion, demonstrating high accuracy and efficiency, and applies it to a chemotaxis model, offering a new computational tool for cell dynamics studies.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel phase field approach for intracellular diffusion modeling, comparing it with traditional methods and applying it to chemotaxis.

Findings

High accuracy compared to exact solutions

Easy to implement and computationally inexpensive

Successfully applied to a chemotaxis model

Abstract

We introduce a phase field approach for diffusion inside and outside a closed cell with damping and with source terms at the interface. The method is compared to exact solutions (where possible) and the more traditional finite element method. It is shown to be very accurate, easy to implement and computationally inexpensive. We apply our method to a recently introduced model for chemotaxis by Rappel et al. [Biophys. J. 83, 1361 (2002)].