Abstract
Biological cells are almost never truly spherical, even in the absence of an obvious cause that disrupts the cell’s symmetry. Using rather simple energy considerations, we show that even though all real biological cells are subject to a completely radial electric field along the cell membrane, the spherical shape is unstable under most practical situations. This simple result appears to have been overlooked in the literature.
Issue Section:
Research Papers
Keywords:
constitutive modeling of materials
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