For various cell types and for lamellipodial fragments on flat surfaces, externally induced and spontaneous transitions between symmetric nonmoving states and polarized migration have been observed. This behavior is indicative of bistability of the cytoskeleton dynamics. In this work, the Filament Based Lamellipodium Model (FBLM), a two-dimensional, anisotropic, two-phase continuum model for the dynamics of the actin filament network in lamellipodia, is extended by a new description of actin-myosin interaction. For appropriately chosen parameter values, the resulting model has bistable dynamics with stable states showing the qualitative features observed in experiments. This is demonstrated by numerical simulations and by an analysis of a strongly simplified version of the FBLM with rigid filaments and planar lamellipodia at the cell front and rear.
Keywords: Actin; Cytoskeleton; Mathematical model.