Closing the loop: Lamellipodia dynamics from the perspective of front propagation

We develop a simple physical model that captures the large-scale lamellipodia dynamics in crawling cells and explains the observed spectrum of fish keratocytes behavior. The main ingredients in this description are the geometrical evolution of the lamellipodium leading edge, the dynamic remodeling of the actin network, and the interconnection between them. We deviate from existing theoretical works and consider the lamellipodium leading edge as a propagating front. The agreement of our model with experimental works suggests that the large-scale morphological and migration features exhibited by keratocyte cells are a direct consequence of the closed feedback loop between the shape of the leading edge and the density of the actin network.