Systems Biomechanics of the Cell - Systems Biomechanics of the Cell - page 33

Fig. 16 Minimization of the energy of the cell boundary with attachment to a planar substrate.
( a ) The energy landscape. The angles on the axes define the orientation of the cell body. The global
minimum is marked. ( b ) The conformation corresponding to the global minimum. Plotting con-
ventions as in Fig. 15 . Reproduced from Arkhipov and Maly ( 2006a , doi:10.1088/1478-
3975/3/3/006) with permission from IOP Publishing
cell will likely explore the dynamic interactions of the cell body and boundary. The
simplified approach of considering one as a constraint for the other, however, may
still remain valuable conceptually even after the methods of numerical treatment of
the fully dynamic interaction become improved.