Mechanical Properties of Living Adherent Cells: Interaction of Cell and Shear flow

摘要

To investigate the interaction of the adherent cell and shear flow, a compound drop model was developed to simulate a living adherent cell adhered to a smooth substrate, and a two dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was conducted to solve the model equations. The results showed that the deformability of the cell increases with Reynolds number and initial contact angle. The nucleus deforms with the cell, and the deformation index of the cell is greater than that of the nucleus. The cell is more deformable while the nucleus is more capable of resisting external shear flow. The cell and the nucleus are not able to deform infinitely with the increase of Reynolds number and the deformation index reaches a maximum. We conclude that the nucleus plays a particular role in the mechanical properties of the adherent cell.