The Numerical Study Of The Force And Chemotaxis Of Chemotactic Cells In Microchannels

Many cells have the feature of chamotaxis,which refers to the ability of autonomous and directional movement of living cells in the influence of concentration gradient.This phenomenon has been found and widely accepted since the late nighteens.The study of chamotactic effects of cells is mainly focused on the use of microfluidic technology to establish a stable,linear or non-linear temporal concentration gradient,which is good for the quantitative observation of cell's reaction to different concentration gradient.Nowadays,the study of chemoattractant effects in microchannels has generally ignored the influence of the existence and movement of the cell on the concentration gradient field.In this paper,we adopt the T-channel with a chamber to study the impact of the movement of cells on the concentration gradient field,including the impact of inlet velocity of microchannel,speed of cell's movement and cell's size.We analyze the force and chemotactic behaviours of cells quantitatively.We compare the results between 2D and 3D T-channel and adopt the definition of mix variance coefficient to quantitatively analyze the main differences between 2D and 3D simulations and the influence mechanism of cell to concentration gradient field.The results show that 1)the uniform motion of cell has significant effects on both the maximum concentration difference and direction,which are related with the Peclet number,cell movement velocity and cell diameter;2)The comparisions between 2D and 3D models tell us 2D model could describe the variance of chemotaxis dynamics qualitatively,but cell's movement has a larger influence on the concentration gradient field in 2D model than in 3D model.This study has significant effects on further quantitative studies of cell's chemotaxis.