Stick-slip model for actin-driven cell protrusions, cell polarization, and crawling.

ABSTRACT: Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as spontaneous symmetry breaking and crawling in the absence of external cues, and periodic and propagating waves of activity. Mechanical instabilities in the active cytoskeleton network and feedback loops in the biochemical network of activators and repressors of cytoskeleton dynamics have been invoked to explain these dynamical features. Here, I show that the interplay between the dynamics of cell-substrate adhesion and linear cellular mechanics is sufficient to reproduce many nonlinear dynamical patterns observed in spreading and crawling cells. Using an ana

SUBMITTER: Sens P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7547270 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature