Viscoelastic response of contractile filament bundles
Abstract
The actin cytoskeleton of adherent tissue cells often condenses into filament bundles contracted by myosin motors, so-called stress fibers, which play a crucial role in the mechanical interaction of cells with their environment. Stress fibers are usually attached to their environment at the endpoints, but possibly also along their whole length. We introduce a theoretical model for such contractile filament bundles which combines passive viscoelasticity with active contractility. The model equations are solved analytically for two different types of boundary conditions. A free boundary corresponds to stress fiber contraction dynamics after laser surgery and results in good agreement with experimental data. Imposing cyclic varying boundary forces allows us to calculate the complex modulus of a single stress fiber.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1102.5295,
title = {Viscoelastic response of contractile filament bundles},
author = {Achim Besser and Julien Colombelli and Ernst H. K. Stelzer and Ulrich S. Schwarz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.5295},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Revtex with 24 pages, 7 Postscript figures included, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. E