Comment on "Intracellular stresses in patterned cell assemblies" by M. Moussus et al., Soft Matter, 2014, 10, 2414.

Abstract

To quantify intercellular stresses in a cell sheet, Moussus et al. have recently proposed an approach which, under appropriate circumstances, may lead to significant simplification of the calculations required for stress recovery. Central to their approach is the assumption that the displacement fields of the substrate and the cells are continuous across the cell/substrate boundary. The purpose of this comment is to assess the validity and to highlight the implications of the displacement continuity assumption.