Sharif Digital Repository

Endothelium is the interior layer of an artery made up of tremendous number of endothelial cells which are located side by side. Finding the effective parameters that cause the cells to obtain mechanical strength in different morphologies is a major effort in cell engineering studies. In this work a numerical model for endothelial cells is developed. This model has included cell's plasma membrane (the outer membrane of the cell), nucleus and cytoskeleton main components including intermediate and actin filaments as well as microtubules. The model has been validated by simulating the adhesion of the cells to a flat substrate and also atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments. The two most... 

In this project the main aim is to model the interaction between the cytoskeleton and cell membrane. In order to model the membrane and cytoskeleton it is used a discrete model, which contains several beads. For modeling the interaction between the beads it is used different kinds of energies. It is used four potentials in a 2D model for modeling the interaction between the membrane beads and it is used SSLJ potential in order to model the interaction between the cytoskeleton and cell membrane. Furthermore, this potential is used to model the interaction between the cytoskeleton filaments. Due to this potential, the cytoskeleton filaments can cross each other in the 2D model. For modeling... 

Actin is the most abundant protein in most eukaryotic cells. It is highly conserved and participates in more protein-protein interactions than any known protein. Actin plays a crucial role in cell motility, adhesion, morphology and intracellular transport. Its biologically active form is the filament (F-actin), which is assembled from monomeric G-actin. In this thesis, the mechanical properties and characteristics of both G- and F-actin are studied using molecular dynamics simulations. In general, this thesis can be categorized into two individual parts: First, steered molecular dynamics simulation was performed to assess tension of monomeric G-actin molecule, and stress-strain curves were... 

The network of actin filaments is one of the three elements of the Cytoskeleton and plays a role in cell shape and migration. The actin network is dynamic; it (de)polymerizes, and in migrating and spreading cells, it is in a retrograde motion from the cell periphery toward cell nucleus. Adhesion points, which link the cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix, interact with the actin retrograde flow. Actin filaments can be identified in two distinct regions in which their structure, flow velocity, driving force and size of the adhesions are different; the outer region is called Lamellipodium and the inner one Lamellum. In macro scale and regarding spreading cells, considering adhesions... 

Diseases such as cancer lead to extensive conversion in the biological structure of cells. These conversions can overshadow cell function. The dynamics of a cell directly depends on how it interacts with other cells and the extracellular environment. Most of these interactions are associated with the occurrence of mechanical phenomena and are due to forces that the cell has experienced. Cell mechanics manifests itself in the Mechanotransduction, the ability of a cell to sense and respond to external forces. Cancer alters the mechanical properties of the components of the cytoskeleton. Understanding the biomechanical behavior of cells and cytoskeleton can play an important role in early...