PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Abhay Gupta
AU  - Ganna Reint
AU  - Irep Gözen
AU  - Michael Taylor
TI  - A cellular automaton for modeling non-trivial biomembrane ruptures
AID  - 10.1101/429548
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 429548
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/27/429548.1.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/27/429548.1.full
AB  - A novel cellular automaton (CA) for simulating biological membrane rupture is proposed. Constructed via simple rules governing deformation, tension, and fracture, the CA incorporates ideas from standard percolation models and bond-based fracture methods. The model is demonstrated by comparing simulations with experimental results of a double bilayer lipid membrane expanding on a solid substrate. Results indicate that the CA can capture non-trivial rupture morphologies such as floral patterns and the saltatory dynamics of fractal avalanches observed in experiments. Moreover, the CA provides insight into the poorly understood role of inter-layer adhesion, supporting the hypothesis that the density of adhesion sites governs rupture morphology.