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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Cell-strain-energy costs of active control of contractility

Josephine Solowiej-Wedderburn and Carina M. Dunlop*

  • School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom

  • *c.dunlop@surrey.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. E 107, L062401 – Published 21 June, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.107.L062401

Abstract

Cell mechanosensing is implicated in the control of a broad range of cell behaviors, with cytoskeletal contractility a key component. Experimentally, it is observed that the contractility of the cell responds to increasing substrate stiffness, showing increased contractile force and changing the distribution of cytoskeletal elements. Here, we show using a theoretical model of active cell contractility that upregulation of contractility need not be energetically expensive, especially when combined with changes in adhesion and contractile distribution. Indeed, we show that a feedback mechanism based on the maintenance of strain energy would require an upregulation in contractile pressure on all but the softest substrates. We consider both the commonly reported substrate strain energy and active work done. We demonstrate substrate strain energy would preferentially select for the experimentally observed clustering of cell adhesions on stiffer substrates which effectively soften the substrate and enable an upregulation of total contractile pressure, while the localization of contractility has the greatest impact on the internal work.

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Information

Phys. Rev. E 107, L062401– Published 21 June, 2023
  • Received 22 August 2022
  • Accepted 8 June 2023
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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