Micro-Groove Contact Guidance: Cell Alignment on Biomaterial Surfaces

This simulator renders a micro-grooved biomaterial surface and a live population of migrating cells that turn to align with the groove direction — the mechanism biomaterials engineers exploit when they texture titanium implants, PDMS dishes or electrospun scaffolds to steer osteoblast, fibroblast or neurite orientation. Each cell's heading evolves under a nematic alignment torque whose strength rises with groove depth along a saturating dose-response curve and falls off as groove pitch widens beyond a spread cell's footprint, competing against rotational noise from the cell's own protrusive activity. Adjust groove depth, groove pitch, motility and population size and watch the live nematic order parameter, guidance strength, migration anisotropy and elapsed simulated time track the population's transition from a random swarm to a co-aligned, groove-tracking front.