Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6614

Yu ZhuFollow

Date

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Physics

Concentration

Computational Physics

Committee Chair

Mohamed Laradji

Committee Member

Firouzeh Sabri

Committee Member

Chenhui Peng

Abstract

A number of experimental studies have been reported on the spatial organization and collective motion of living cells during the past few decades. To explain the experimentally observed results, we propose a novel approach, in which the cells are modeled as semi-flexible ring polymers. We found that the basic physical properties of the polymer rings, such as average area per cell, elongation, and orientation highly depend on the areal polymer density. Investigations of systems composed of two types of ring polymers with different bending rigidities show that multi-component ring-polymer systems exhibit microphase separation. Simulations of the ring polymers on a unidirectional patterned substrate show that the polymers tend to orient along the direction of the substrate pattern. Simulations of the cells in the presence of non-equilibrium motile forces show that driven cell motility leads to aggregation of the cells with strong correlations in the velocity field.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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