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. 2015 May 12;8:8. doi: 10.1186/s13628-015-0022-x

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© Magno et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Cell surface mechanics.(A) Illustration of the three main forces regulating the cell surface mechanics: adhesion-driven tension, cortical tension and pressure. Adhesion is described as a constant tension J along the surface (green arrows). The cortical tension is described by an elastic tension with equilibrium length P and elasticity constant of λ _p (orange spring). (B) The interfacial tension is defined as the altogether adhesion-driven and cortical tensions. (C) Deformations away from the cell’s target area A generates a pressure Π (white arrows).