Cell morphology is commonly approximated using simple regular models. This approach, while didactic for academic purposes, may not turn out to be the most suitable for sound studies. This oversimplification of the cell geometry leads to incorrect estimations of general mass transport from the cellular membrane to the core. We have carried out numerical simulations of intracellular mass transport in both idealized and realistic models of human cell geometries in order to assess the suitability of the former to study biological transport phenomena. Our results indicate that in general the use of regular geometric models does not satisfactorily reproduce the results from more realistic geometries. In fact, the partial agreement between idealized and realistic representations of the cells is found to be highly dependent upon transport and reaction conditions, in specific of the Biot number and Thiele modulus values. This work should prevent future studies to avoid as much as possible oversimplifying the cell geometry when performing intracellular simulations as well as experimental designs.
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