Abstract
Endothelium is the interior layer of an artery made up of tremendous number of endothelial cells which are located side by side. Finding the effective parameters that cause the cells to obtain mechanical strength in different morphologies is an important issue in cell biomechanics. In this work a numerical model for a single endothelial cell is developed. This model includes cell’s plasma membrane and nucleus using the traingular network of spectrin level approach. Cy-toskeleton main components such as intermediate and actin filaments as well as microtubules are the other important subsets of the simulated model. Mass and spring theory is utilized in cytoskeleton components simulation. A spreading model is applied on the cell in order to simulate the adhesion on a substrate and test the model’s qualitative performance and the result is verified by the experiment. Also deformation of the cell caused by an external compressive force is another quantitative test which is predicted by the model and the results are validated with an experimental AFM test. The two most popular morphologies of the cells resulted from this work are the cell suspension morphology which is the result of no external forces and the cell adherent morphology which is the result of cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix. The mechanical stiffness of the endothelial cell is obtained in this simulation.
Highlights
Discovering the mechanical behavior of an adherent cell is one of the important goals in prevention and treatment of the cardiovascular diseases
The two most popular morphologies of the cells resulted from this work are the cell suspension morphology which is the result of no external forces and the cell adherent morphology which is the result of cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix
This study presents a mechanical endothelial cell model using the combination of mass and spring method and spectrin level theory
Summary
Discovering the mechanical behavior of an adherent cell (a cell which is connected to the extracellular matrix) is one of the important goals in prevention and treatment of the cardiovascular diseases. Recognizing the mechanism of arterial diseases like arteriosclerosis, heart attack requires discovering of cell’s behavior in different conditions especially for adherent-cell responses to mechanical stimulations [1]. Nucleus, actin filaments (or microtubules), focal adhesion site and cell to cell adhesion proteins are considered in Mazzag et al.’s work [6] They modeled the cell as a simple linear viscoelastic Kelvin body. Nucleus, actin filaments, microtubules, and intermediate filaments are some of the main organelles inside living cells which have been simulated in this work Considering all these components will help the model to be more realistic and trustworthy but adding other sub-proteins such as actinins and filamins to the model will help it to show more precise behavior. The final outcome of this work is two major morphologies of a stable cell, cell suspension and cell adherent morphologies
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