Mathematical modeling of myosin induced bistability of lamellipodial fragments (Q504051)

The article considers a model for the dynamics of lamelliapodial filamens orerating with the system of actin-myosin compartments and their interactions. The principal structure is a net of crossing actin filaments, which are pair-wisely connected by myosin links; in addition, these connection can be created and broken in dependence on the forces acting on them. The model construction takes into account energy contribution of various configurations and results in the system of Euler-Lagrange equations obtained via the variational approach that results in the biologically relevant bistable solution. This construction is illustrated with the numerical simulation able to demonstrate that the modelled cell fragments can remain stationary or be in a moving state.