As you read this sentence, trillions of cells are moving around in your body. From the red blood cells being pumped by your heart, to the immune cells racing across your lymphatic system, everything you need to live pulsates and flows in a turbulent dance of finely tuned biological machinery.
Because its physical properties are so unique, understanding the fluid dynamics of flowing biological cells like these has been an important topic of research. New insights can lead to the development of better microfluidic devices that study disease, and even improve the function of artificial hearts. However, live tracking and observing flowing cells as it moves across the body is still a challenge.
Now, utilizing numerical simulations, researchers from Japan have succeeded in recreating the fluid dynamics of flowing cells. In their paper, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, the team created an in-silico cell model—a simulation of biological cells—by programming them as deformable “capsules,” and placed them in a simulated tube under a pulsating “flow,” mimicking how cells travel through a vessel.
