Modeling actin cable contraction

  • Authors:
  • LuíS Almeida;Patrizia Bagnerini;Abderrahmane Habbal

  • Affiliations:
  • CNRS, UMR 7598, Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, F-75005, Paris, France and UPMC Univ Paris 06, UMR 7598, Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, F-75005, Paris, France;DIME, Universití degli Studi di Genova, P.le Kennedy-Pad D, 16129 Genova, Italy;Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné, Université de Nice and INRIA Sophia Antipolis, UMR 6621 CNRS, Parc Valrose, F-06108 NICE Cédex 02, France and Inria Sophia Antipolis - Méditerran ...

  • Venue:
  • Computers & Mathematics with Applications
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Extension of an epithelial membrane to close a hole is a very widespread process both in morphogenesis and in tissue repair. In many circumstances an important component driving these movements is an actomyosin contraction which consists of meshworks of actin filaments cross-linked by Myosin II molecular motors. We introduce a mathematical model to simulate the contraction of an actin cable structure attached to an external epithelial tissue and we use this curvature-type model as a basis to build other models in more general settings. This result is obtained by adding extra terms that describe the particular process we want to model (lamellipodial crawling, granulation tissue contraction, extension of actin protrusions, epithelial resistance, etc.). Finally, we concentrate on the treatment of non-homogeneous forces, i.e. non-constant boundary terms which can be associated with a non-uniform cable, internal pull or zipping force due to the non-uniformity of the biological or physical properties of the boundary cells or of the connective tissue.