“…In microscopic views, cell-cell and cell-substrate adhesion was studied with statistical physics method, such as the well-known Bell's model (Bell, 1978). In order to interpret cell reorientation in experiments, Kong et al (2008) established a stochastic model to investigate the stability of focal adhesion under a dynamic load by applying an externally cyclical strain on substrates, and found that a threshold of the external strain amplitude exists beyond which the adhesion cluster disrupts quickly. Combining the statistical physics and the elastic contact theory, series of theoretical models were proposed in order to characterize cell-substrate adhesion (Gao et al, 2011;Qian and Gao, 2010;Zhang et al, 2013Zhang et al, , 2012, in which the effect of matrix stiffness (Qian and Gao, 2010), anisotropy of matrix material (Zhang et al, 2013), graded modulus of substrates (Zhang et al, 2012) and the pulling angle of external forces (Gao et al, 2011) were considered.…”