An immersed boundary method for simulating a single axisymmetric cell growth and division

Abstract

For an animal cell, cytokinesis is the process by which a cell divides its cytoplasm to produce two daughter cells. We propose a new mathematical model for simulating cytokinesis. The proposed model is robust and realistic in deciding the position of the cleavage furrow and in defining the contractile force leading to cell division. We use an immersed boundary method to track the morphology of cell membrane during cytokinesis. For accurate calculation, we adaptively add and delete the immersed boundary points. We perform numerical simulations on the axisymmetric domain to have sufficient resolution and to incorporate three-dimensional effects such as anisotropic surface tension. Finally, we investigate the effects of each model parameter and compare a numerical result with the experimental data to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our proposed method.