Fig. 3.

Variation of the critical suction pressure for membrane-cytoskeleton unbinding with the loading rate β, obtained by comparing the maximal cortical tension (Fig. 2) with the critical tension for linkers unbinding, Eq. 3. For the same suction pressure, the membrane may detach from the cortex if the pressure is applied quickly (dot A, e.g., when the cell first contact the micropipette), while being stable for slow loading rate (dot B, e.g., during the myosin-driven cell retraction; see text). For a large suction pressure, the cortex detaches even at very slow rate (β → 0) because of the stress caused by friction with the pipette. The critical force per bond is (see SI Text), with other parameters as in Fig. 2.