Active soft glassy rheology of adherent cells
Abstract
Adherent cells show a wide range of complex mechanical behavior that traditionally has been accounted for by different mechanisms and models, each of which can explain a limited subset of cell behavior. Experimental evidence suggests that nearly all aspects of mechanical cell behavior are closely associated with the cell's contractile machinery of actin and myosin filaments. We propose that the molecular details of actin–myosin interactions can be combined in a unified active soft glassy model that considers the arrangement of stress fibers at the macro-scale, and the soft-glassy non-equilibrium interaction of myosin and actin filaments at the micro-scale.