Spreading of an anchorage-dependent cell on a selectively ligand-coated substrate mediated by receptor-ligand binding

A continuum model was proposed to simulate a biological cell adhering to a substrate surface domain with selectively coated ligands. Cell adhesion was modeled by a traction-separation law depending on the receptor-ligand distance and their densities. It was found that the obtained spreading patterns are consistent with published experimental data and that adhesion requires a nonuniform distribution of receptors at the spreading front with convex fronts requiring a much higher receptor density than concave fronts. Adhesion strength was also found to be more influential than adhesion energy on the spreading kinetics.