#39 · Systems biology

Simulations couple molecular binding to emergent cell and tissue mechanics

The dominant thread is simulation of mechanically coupled cellular systems in which molecular-scale interactions are resolved against emergent organization. FraCeMM couples stochastic ligand-integrin-talin binding to a deformable soft-body cell on elastic substrates, linking binding kinetics to whole-cell mechanical response. The plant study applies physics-based inversion to AFM storage and loss moduli of Arabidopsis cell walls, producing spatial maps of stiffness, viscosity and relaxation time; it characterizes mechanics rather than modeling explicit binding. The vertex-model study of heterogeneous tissues reports best collective migration at intermediate adhesion and is the only item tested against zebrafish mesendoderm Nodal data, but it does not explicitly couple molecular binding. What is new is explicit coupling of binding or regulatory interactions to emergent architecture, which among these three items appears only in FraCeMM.