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Dynamics of cell orientation

Nature Physics volume 3, pages 655–659 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Many physiological processes depend on the response of biological cells to mechanical forces generated by the contractile activity of the cell or by external stresses. Using a simple theoretical model that includes the forces due to both the mechanosensitivity of cells and the elasticity of the matrix, we predict the dynamics and orientation of cells in both the absence and presence of applied stresses. The model predicts many features observed in measurements of cellular forces and orientation including the increase with time of the cellular forces in the absence of applied stress and the consequent decrease of the force in the presence of quasi-static stresses. We also explain the puzzling observation of parallel alignment of cells for static and quasi-static stresses and of nearly perpendicular alignment for dynamically varying stresses. In addition, we predict the response of the cellular orientation to a sinusoidally varying applied stress as a function of frequency.

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Figure 1: An illustration of the instantaneous position of a needle-like cell oriented along the z axis.
Figure 2: Time evolution of the strength of the force dipole in the presence of applied static stress.
Figure 3: Time evolution of cellular dipole orientation in the presence of external cyclic stress.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for discussions with A. Buguin, M. E. Fisher, N. Gov, S. Jungbauer, R. Kemkemer, B. Ladoux, A. Nicolas, J. Prost, U. Schwarz and P. Silberzan and for support from the Israel Science Foundation and an EU Network Grant. This research was made possible in part by the historic generosity of the Harold Perlman Family.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

    Rumi De, Assaf Zemel & Samuel A. Safran

  2. Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA

    Assaf Zemel

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  1. Rumi De
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  2. Assaf Zemel
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  3. Samuel A. Safran
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Correspondence to Samuel A. Safran.

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De, R., Zemel, A. & Safran, S. Dynamics of cell orientation. Nature Phys 3, 655–659 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys680

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