The role of the nucleus for cell mechanics: an elastic phase field approach.
Soft Matter
; 20(22): 4488-4503, 2024 Jun 05.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38804018
ABSTRACT
The nucleus of eukaryotic cells typically makes up around 30% of the cell volume and has significantly different mechanics, which can make it effectively up to ten times stiffer than the surrounding cytoplasm. Therefore it is an important element for cell mechanics, but a quantitative understanding of its mechanical role during whole cell dynamics is largely missing. Here we demonstrate that elastic phase fields can be used to describe dynamical cell processes in adhesive or confining environments in which the nucleus acts as a stiff inclusion in an elastic cytoplasm. We first introduce and verify our computational method and then study several prevalent cell-mechanical measurement methods. For cells on adhesive patterns, we find that nuclear stress is shielded by the adhesive pattern. For cell compression between two parallel plates, we obtain force-compression curves that allow us to extract an effective modulus for the cell-nucleus composite. For micropipette aspiration, the effect of the nucleus on the effective modulus is found to be much weaker, highlighting the complicated interplay between extracellular geometry and cell mechanics that is captured by our approach. We also show that our phase field approach can be used to investigate the effects of Kelvin-Voigt-type viscoelasticity and cortical tension.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Núcleo Celular
/
Elasticidad
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Soft Matter
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Alemania