Two-Phase Acto-Cytosolic Fluid Flow in a Moving Keratocyte: A 2D Continuum Model

The F-actin network and cytosol in the lamellipodia of crawling cells flow in a centripetal pattern and spout-like form, respectively. We have numerically studied this two-phase flow in the realistic geometry of a moving keratocyte. Cytosol has been treated as a low viscosity Newtonian fluid flowing through the high viscosity porous medium of F-actin network. Other involved phenomena including myosin activity, adhesion friction, and interphase interaction are also discussed to provide an overall view of this problem. Adopting a two-phase coupled model by myosin concentration, we have found new accurate perspectives of acto-cytosolic flow and pressure fields, myosin distribution, as well as the distribution of effective forces across the lamellipodia of a keratocyte with stationary shape. The order of magnitude method is also used to determine the contribution of forces in the internal dynamics of lamellipodia.

Mathematical modeling of eukaryotic cell migration: insights beyond experiments

A migrating cell is a molecular machine made of tens of thousands of short-lived and interacting parts. Understanding migration means understanding the self-organization of these parts into a system of functional units. This task is one of tackling complexity: First, the system integrates numerous chemical and mechanical component processes. Second, these processes are connected in feedback interactions and over a large range of spatial and temporal scales. Third, many processes are stochastic, which leads to heterogeneous migration behaviors. Early on in the research of cell migration it became evident that this complexity exceeds human intuition. Thus, the cell migration community has led the charge to build mathematical models that could integrate the diverse experimental observations and measurements in consistent frameworks, first in conceptual and more recently in molecularly explicit models. The main goal of this review is to sift through a series of important conceptual and explicit mathematical models of cell migration and to evaluate their contribution to the field in their ability to integrate critical experimental data.

A comparison of computational models for eukaryotic cell shape and motility

Eukaryotic cell motility involves complex interactions of signalling molecules, cytoskeleton, cell membrane, and mechanics interacting in space and time. Collectively, these components are used by the cell to interpret and respond to external stimuli, leading to polarization, protrusion, adhesion formation, and myosin-facilitated retraction. When these processes are choreographed correctly, shape change and motility results. A wealth of experimental data have identified numerous molecular constituents involved in these processes, but the complexity of their interactions and spatial organization make this a challenging problem to understand. This has motivated theoretical and computational approaches with simplified caricatures of cell structure and behaviour, each aiming to gain better understanding of certain kinds of cells and/or repertoire of behaviour. Reaction–diffusion (RD) equations as well as equations of viscoelastic flows have been used to describe the motility machinery. In this review, we describe some of the recent computational models for cell motility, concentrating on simulations of cell shape changes (mainly in two but also three dimensions). The problem is challenging not only due to the difficulty of abstracting and simplifying biological complexity but also because computing RD or fluid flow equations in deforming regions, known as a “free-boundary” problem, is an extremely challenging problem in applied mathematics. Here we describe the distinct approaches, comparing their strengths and weaknesses, and the kinds of biological questions that they have been able to address.

MULTISCALE TWO-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF A MOTILE SIMPLE-SHAPED CELL

Cell crawling is an important biological phenomenon underlying coordinated cell movement in morphogenesis, cancer, and wound healing. In recent decades the process of cell crawling has been experimentally and theoretically dissected into further subprocesses: protrusion of the cell at its leading edge, retraction of the cell body, and graded adhesion. A number of one-dimensional (1-D) models explain successfully a proximal-distal organization and movement of the motile cell. However, more adequate two-dimensional (2-D) models are lacking. We propose a multiscale 2-D computational model of the lamellipodium (motile appendage) of a simply shaped, rapidly crawling fish keratocyte cell. We couple submodels of (i) protrusion and adhesion at the leading edge, (ii) the elastic 2-D lamellipodial actin network, (iii) the actin-myosin contractile bundle at the rear edge, and (iv) the convection-reaction-diffusion actin transport on the free boundary lamellipodial domain. We simulate the combined model numerically using a finite element approach. The simulations reproduce observed cell shapes, forces, and movements and explain some experimental results on perturbations of the actin machinery. This novel 2-D model of the crawling cell makes testable predictions and posits questions to be answered by future modeling.

Shape and motility of a model cell: A computational study

We have investigated the shape, size, and motility of a minimal model of an adherent biological cell using the Monte Carlo method. The cell is modeled as a two dimensional ring polymer on the square lattice enclosing continuously polymerizing and depolymerizing actin networks. Our lattice model is an approximate representation of a real cell at a resolution of one actin molecule, 5 nm. The polymerization kinetics for the actin network are controlled by appropriate reaction probabilities which correspond to the correct experimental reaction rates. Using the simulation data we establish various scaling laws relating the size of the model cell to the concentration of polymerized and unpolymerized actin molecules and the length of the enclosing membrane. The computed drift velocities, which characterize the motility of the cell, exhibit a maximum at a certain fraction of polymerized actin which agrees with physiological fractions observed in experiments. The appearance of the maximum is related to the competition between the polymerization-induced protrusion of the membrane and the concomitant suppression of membrane fluctuations.