Non linear behaviour of cell tensegrity models

Tensegrity models for the cytoskeleton structure of living cells is largely used nowadays for interpreting the biochemical response of living tissues to mechanical stresses. Microtubules, microfilaments and filaments are the microscopic cell counterparts of struts (microtubules) and cables (microfilaments and filaments) in the macroscopic world: the formers oppose to compression, the latters to tension, thus yielding an overall structure, light and highly deformable. Specific cell surface receptors, such as integrins, act as the coupling elements that transmit the outside mechanical stress state into the cell body. Reversible finite deformations of tensegrity structures have been widely demonstrated experimentally and in a number of living cell simulations. In the present paper, the bistability behaviour of two general models, the linear bar oscillator and the icosahedron, is studied, as they are both obtained from mathematical simulation, the former, and from larger scale experiments, the latter. The discontinuity in the frequency response of the oscillation amplitude and the lateral bending of the resonance curves are put in evidence, as it grows larger as the driving amplitude increases, respectively.