A cellular automaton for modeling non-trivial biomembrane ruptures

Gupta, A.; Reint, G.; Gozen, I.; Taylor, M.

doi:10.1101/429548

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bioRxiv · 10.1101/429548

A cellular automaton for modeling non-trivial biomembrane ruptures

Gupta, A.·Reint, G.·Gozen, I.·Taylor, M.

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Abstract

A novel cellular automaton (CA) for simulating biological membrane rupture is proposed. Constructed via simple rules governing deformation, tension, and fracture, the CA incorporates ideas from standard percolation models and bond-based fracture methods. The model is demonstrated by comparing simulations with experimental results of a double bilayer lipid membrane expanding on a solid substrate. Results indicate that the CA can capture non-trivial rupture morphologies such as floral patterns and the saltatory dynamics of fractal avalanches observed in experiments. Moreover, the CA provides insight into the poorly understood role of inter-layer adhesion, supporting the hypothesis that the density of adhesion sites governs rupture morphology.

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Gupta, A., Reint, G., Gozen, I., Taylor, M.. 2018-09-27. A cellular automaton for modeling non-trivial biomembrane ruptures. https://doi.org/10.1101/429548

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