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Description
Traction forces are critical for the interaction of the cell with its environment, cell polarization and motion. We have recently observed that traction stress that the cell exerts on the substrate is correlated to the cell-edge dynamics and increases with the distance between the cell edge and the center. In this work, we test if these features of traction force distribution could be reproduced by a simple model of force transmission in the actomyosin network (Ronceray et al., PNAS, 2015, doi:10.1073). We observe that in the case of a centripetal force located in the center of the cell, the force decays with distance. Force dipoles distributed throughout the cell lead to more complex force distributions which are currently under investigation.
