Shear Flow-Induced Detachment Kinetics of Dictyostelium discoideum Cells from Solid Substrate

Using Dictyostelium discoideum as a model organism of specific and nonspecific adhesion, we studied the kinetics of shear flow-induced cell detachment. For a given cell, detachment occurs for values of the applied hydrodynamic stress above a threshold. Cells are removed from the substrate with an apparent first-order rate constant that strongly depends on the applied stress. The threshold stress depends on cell size and physicochemical properties of the substrate, but is not affected by depolymerization of the actin and tubulin cytoskeleton. In contrast, the kinetics of cell detachment is almost independent of cell size, but is strongly affected by a modification of the substrate and the presence of an intact actin cytoskeleton. These results are interpreted in the framework of a peeling model. The threshold stress and the cell-detachment rate measure the local equilibrium energy and the dissociation rate constant of the adhesion bridges, respectively.