Mechanics Reveals the Biological Trigger in Wrinkly Fingers

P. Sáez, A. M. Zöllner

Fingertips wrinkle due to long exposure to water. The biological reason for this morphological change is unclear and still not fully understood. There are two main hypotheses for the underlying mechanism of fingertip wrinkling: the 'shrink' model (in which the wrinkling is driven by the contraction of the lower layers of skin, associated with the shrinking of the underlying vasculature), and the 'swell' model (in which the wrinkling is driven by the swelling of the upper layers of the skin, associated with osmosis). In reality, contraction of the lower layers of the skin and swelling of the upper layers will happen simultaneously. However, the relative importance of these two mechanisms to drive fingertip wrinkling also remains unclear. Simulating the swelling in the upper layers of skin alone, which is associated with neurological disorders, we found that wrinkles appeared above an increase of volume of [Formula: see text] Therefore, the upper layers can not exceed this swelling level in order to not contradict in vivo observations in patients with such neurological disorders. Simulating the contraction of the lower layers of the skin alone, we found that the volume have to decrease a [Formula: see text] to observe wrinkles. Furthermore, we found that the combined effect of both mechanisms leads to pronounced wrinkles even at low levels of swelling and contraction when individually they do not. This latter results indicates that the collaborative effect of both hypothesis are needed to induce wrinkles in the fingertips. Our results demonstrate how models from continuum mechanics can be successfully applied to testing hypotheses for the mechanisms that underly fingertip wrinkling, and how these effects can be quantified.