Related papers: Spontaneous sarcomere dynamics
Mechanical oscillations are important for many cellular processes, e.g. the beating of cilia and flagella or the sensation of sound by hair cells. These dynamic states originate from spontaneous oscillations of molecular motors. A…
Muscle contraction, both in skeletal and cardiac tissue, is driven by sarcomeres, the microscopic units inside muscle cells where thick myosin and thin actin filaments slide past each other. During contraction and relaxation, the…
Cooperative action of molecular motors is essential for many cellular processes. One possible regulator of motor coordination is the elasticity-mediated crosstalk (EMC) coupling between myosin II motors whose origin is the tensile stress…
In this paper we report, clarify and broaden various recent efforts to complement the chemistry-centered models of force generation in muscles by mechanics-centered models. The physical mechanisms of interest can be grouped into two…
During muscle contraction, myosin motors anchored to thick filaments bind to and slide actin thin filaments. These motors rely on energy derived from ATP, supplied, in part, by diffusion from the sarcoplasm to the interior of the lattice of…
Biological muscles have always attracted robotics researchers due to their efficient capabilities in compliance, force generation, and mechanical work. Many groups are working on the development of artificial muscles, however,…
Myosin II is the muscle molecular motor that works in two bipolar arrays in each thick filament of the striated (skeletal and cardiac) muscle, converting the chemical energy into steady force and shortening by cyclic ATP--driven…
Force fluctuations exhibited in focal adhesions (FAs) that connect a cell to its extracellular environment, point to the complex role of the underlying machinery that controls cell migration. To elucidate the explicit role of myosin motors…
A highly organized and densely packed lattice of molecular machinery within the sarcomeres of muscle cells powers contraction. Although many of the proteins that drive contraction have been studied extensively, the mechanical impact of…
Mechanically induced folding of passive cross-linkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon. A typical example is a conformational change in myosin II responsible for the power-stroke in skeletal muscles. In this paper we present an…
Evidence from experimental studies shows that oscillations due to electro-mechanical coupling can be generated spontaneously in smooth muscle cells. Such cellular dynamics are known as \textit{pacemaker dynamics}. In this article we address…
Movement within eukaryotic cells largely originates from localized forces exerted by myosin motors on scaffolds of actin filaments. Although individual motors locally exert both contractile and extensile forces, large actomyosin structures…
Biofilament-motor protein complexes are ubiquitous in biology and drive the transport of cargo vital for many fundamental cellular processes. As they move, motor proteins exert compressive forces on the filaments to which they are attached,…
We propose four novel mathematical models, describing the microscopic mechanisms of force generation in the cardiac muscle tissue, which are suitable for multiscale numerical simulations of cardiac electromechanics. Such models are based on…
The interplay between activity and elasticity often found in active and living systems triggers a plethora of autonomous behaviors ranging from self-assembly and collective motion to actuation. Amongst these, spontaneous self-oscillations…
Forces in the actin cytoskeleton are generated by small groups of non-processive myosin II motors for which stochastic effects are highly relevant. Using a crossbridge model with the assumptions of fast powerstroke kinetics and equal load…
Bundles of filaments and motors are central to contractility in cells. The classic example is striated muscle, where actomyosin contractility is mediated by highly organized sarcomeres which act as fundamental contractile units. However,…
Cellular adaptation to environmental changes relies on the dynamic remodeling of subcellular structures. Among these, sarcomere structures are fundamental to the organization and function of the cytoskeletal architecture. In muscle-type…
Myosin II plays a pivotal role in muscle contraction by generating force through the cooperative action of multiple motors on actin filaments. In this study, we integrate the nonlinear elasticity of the neck linker in individual myosin II…
We investigate the isometric transient response of muscle using a quantitative stochastic model of the actomyosin cycle based on the swinging lever-arm hypothesis. We first consider a single pair of filaments, and show that when values of…