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Force generation by actin polymerization is an important step in cellular motility and can induce the motion of organelles or bacteria, which move inside their host cells by trailing an actin tail behind. Biomimetic experiments on beads and droplets have identified the biochemical ingredients to induce this motion, which requires a spontaneous symmetry breaking in the absence of external fields. We find that the symmetry breaking can be captured on the basis of elasticity theory and linear flux-force relationships. Furthermore, we develop a phase-field approach to study the fully nonlinear regime and show that actin-comet formation is a robust feature, triggered by growth and mechanical stresses. We discuss the implications of symmetry breaking for self-propulsion.

We extend our recent phase-field [T. Biben and C. Misbah, Phys. Rev. E 67, 031908 (2003)] approach to 3D vesicle dynamics. Unlike the boundary-integral formulations, based on the use of the Oseen tensor in the small Reynolds number limit, this method offers several important flexibilities. First, there is no need to track the membrane position; rather this is automatically encoded in dynamics of the phase field to which we assign a finite width representing the membrane extent. Secondly, this method allows naturally for any topology change, like vesicle budding, for example. Thirdly, any non-Newtonian constitutive law, that is generically nonlinear, can be naturally accounted for, a fact which is precluded by the boundary integral formulation. The phase-field approach raises, however, a complication due to the local membrane incompressibility, which, unlike usual interfacial problems, imposes a nontrivial constraint on the membrane. This problem is solved by introducing dynamics of a tension field. The first purpose of this paper is to show how to write adequately the advected-field model for 3D vesicles. We shall then perform a singular expansion of the phase field equation to show that they reduce, in the limit of a vanishing membrane extent, to the sharp boundary equations. Then, we present some results obtained by the phase-field model. We consider two examples; (i) kinetics towards equilibrium shapes and (ii) tanktreading and tumbling. We find a very good agreement between the two methods. We also discuss briefly how effects, such as the membrane shear elasticity and stretching elasticity, and the relative sliding of monolayers, can be accounted for in the phase-field approach.

We analyze the problem of vesicle migration in haptotaxis (a motion directed by an adhesion gradient), though most of the reasoning applies to chemotaxis as well as to a variety of driving forces. A brief account has been published on this topic. We present an extensive analysis of this problem and provide a basic discussion of most of the relevant processes of migration. The problem allows for an arbitrary shape evolution which is compatible with the full hydrodynamical flow in the Stokes limit. The problem is solved within the boundary integral formulation based on the Oseen tensor. For the sake of simplicity we confine ourselves to 2D flows in the numerical analysis. There are basically two regimes (i) the tense regime where the vesicle behaves as a "droplet" with an effective contact angle. In that case the migration velocity is given by the Stokes law. (ii) The flask regime where the vesicle has a significant (on the scale of the vesicle size) contact curvature. In that case we obtain a new migration law which substantially differs from the Stokes law. We develop general arguments in order to extract analytical laws of migration. These are in good agreement with the full numerical analysis. Finally we mention several important future issues and open questions.