Figure 6

Effect of RNAi. Simulation of knockdown. (Upper left panel) Dynamics of the slip bond model with Rac-IC. The timescale of the siRNA mediated knockdown is about two days. Both the amount of focal complexes and focal adhesions is reduced by about 75-80%. (Upper right panel) Dynamics of the slip bond model with Rho-IC. The knockdown leads to a reduction of about 70% of the amount of focal adhesions. (Lower left panel) Dynamics of the catch bond model with Rac-IC. The result is comparable to the slip bond case. (Lower right panel) Dynamics of the coupled catch bond model with Rho-IC. Here the knockdown leads only to a reduction of about 40% of the amount of focal adhesions, which is considerably less than the 70% reduction in the slip bond case. Parameter set PS3 was used for these plots.