Interaction of a migrating cell monolayer with a flexible fiber

Abstract

Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues. This kind of tissue-elastic body interactions are also at the core of many state-of-the-art {\it in situ} force measurement techniques employed in biophysics. This creates the need to model tissue interaction with the surrounding elastic bodies that exert these forces, raising the question: which are the minimum ingredients needed to describe such interactions? We conduct experiments where migrating cell monolayers push on carbon fibers as a model problem. Although the migrating tissue is able to bend the fiber for some time, it eventually recoils before coming to a stop. This stop occurs when cells have performed a fixed mechanical work on the fiber, regardless of its stiffness. Based on these observations we develop a minimal active-fluid model that reproduces the experiments and predicts quantitatively relevant features of the system. This minimal model points out the essential ingredients needed to describe tissue-elastic solid interactions: an effective inertia and viscous stresses.