FORCE DIPOLES IN ANISOTROPIC MATERIALS: CELL ORIENTATION GUIDED BY SUBSTRATE ANISOTROPY?

摘要

Recent studies on cell orientation have shown that cells can actively sense the elastic properties of their environment and strengthen contacts and cytoskeleton in a direction of large effective stiffness. For example, it was found that cells oriented perpendicular to clamped boundaries whilst parallel to free boundaries. It was also suggested that active mechanosensing in an elastically anisotropic medium might lead to cell orientation. In this paper, we first develop an analytical force-dipole solution in anisotropic materials. We then apply this solution to investigate the effect of substrate anisotropy on cell orientation. In our numerical examples, the substrate will be assumed to be cubic, but oriented in different orientations. The interactive energy of the cells is calculated for different boundary conditions (free and clamped) on the surface of the anisotropic substrate.