Interacting cells
Interacting deformable objects, simulated on a highly parallel multi-core system.
The geometry of cells is often described merely in terms of the shape of its cell membrane. It is assumed to deform based on a simple Helfrich model taking into account bending stiffness and curvature terms. An even more simplified model, better descibing the shape of fluid droplets, is based on a conserved mean curvature flow. Taking into account not just one cell, but hundreds or thousands of cells whos shapes are separated from each other and interacting with some interaction potential parametrized by the distance between the cells, the model gets more involved.
Research focus
We have formulated a model for the (steric) interaction of many cell (membranes) that is based on a phase-field description for each cell. This leads to a large system of Cahn-Hilliard equations that need to be solved. Due to loose coupling, i.e. interaction only between neighbouring cells, the whole system can be parallelized using OpenMP or an MPI communication approach.
Student projects and thesis topics
- Parallelization of a model for cell migration coupled to a Navier-Stokes equation (Collective cell migration with hydrodynamic interactions)
- Hybrid parallelization (e.g. OpenMP + MPI) for a cell-interaction model
- Development of a Multi-Mesh approach for Dune.
Publications
- S. Praetorius and A. Voigt, Collective cell behavior - a cell-based parallelization approach for a phase field active polar gel model, In Proceedings of the 9th NIC Symposium (submitted), 2017. [bibtex]
- F. Alaimo, S. Praetorius, and A. Voigt, A microscopic field theoretical approach for active systems, In New J. Phys., Vol. 18 (8), pp. 083008, 2016. [doi] [bibtex]
- W. Marth, S. Praetorius, and A. Voigt, A mechanism for cell motility by active polar gels, In J. R. Soc. Interface, Vol. 12 (107), 2015. [doi] [bibtex]