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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Jul 28.
Published in final edited form as: Nano Lett. 2008 Mar 6;8(4):1153–1158. doi: 10.1021/nl073322a

Figure 5.

Figure 5

Potential mechanism of cell rolling along a selectin edge. (a) Bonds on the trailing edge experience maximum strain. When these bonds break, it results in an asymmetric rotation of the cell (b) that causes the cell to move along the edge (c). This mechanism is similar to cell rolling on a surface, but in addition to rotation along an axis parallel to the surface the cell may also spin in plane along an axis perpendicular to the surface as shown in (b). In case of a rigid microsphere, the area of contact is small and the force due to the flow acts through a point vertically above the area of contact, and this asymmetric motion becomes difficult.