Nano-Mechanical Eukaryotic Cell Behavior by Finite Element Modeling

The cell mechanics behavior must be understood by the scientific community. There is two used methods: nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy AFM. The first one gives displacement between 10-9 and 10-3 meter corresponding to a load from 10-7 to 10 Newton. The second one gives displacement between 10-11 and 10-7 meter corresponding to a load ranging from 10-12 to 10-5 Newton. This work gives the nanoindentation eukaryotic cell simulation by the use of the commercial software: COMSOL Multiphysics and we give the relation to AFM. The nano-mechanical cell behavior was investigated using the finite element method, especially, we implement on it, the mechanics continuum. First, we created the 2D cell model. This model was constrained vertically at the bottom. We used hyperelastic model for the cytoplasm. Nanoindenter and cell contact was assumed to be a source boundary. In the second part of this work, we incorporated a circular section to the model. This circular section represents the nucleus chosen to be elastic. We then show that nucleus influences the cell mechanical response. After modeling and simulation, we obtain results in good agreements with those obtained experimentally.