Related papers: Crunching Biofilament Rings
The actin cytoskeleton in living cells has many types of crosslinkers. The mechanical interplay between these different crosslinker types is an open issue in cytoskeletal mechanics. We develop a framework to study the cooperativity and…
Motor proteins that specifically interact with the ends of cytoskeletal filaments can induce filament depolymerization. A phenomenological description of this process is presented. We show that under certain conditions motors dynamically…
Space-saving design is a requirement that is encountered in biological systems and the development of modern technological devices alike. Many living organisms dynamically pack their polymer chains, filaments or membranes inside of…
Dynamics of various biological filaments can be understood within the framework of active polymer models. Here we consider a bead-spring model for a flexible polymer chain in which the active interaction among the beads is introduced via an…
Active matter systems evade the constraints of thermal equilibrium, leading to the emergence of intriguing collective behavior. A paradigmatic example is given by motor-filament mixtures, where the motion of motor proteins drives alignment…
Hypothesis: The macroscopic properties of polymer composites are governed by the dispersion and aggregation states of filler particles within a crosslinking matrix. Although curing transforms a liquid precursor into a solid network, its…
Confinement can significantly alter fluid properties, offering potential for specific technological applications. However, achieving precise control over the structural complexity of confined fluids and soft matter remains challenging, as…
The classical picture of a star-forming filament is a near-equilibrium structure, with collapse dependent on its gravitational criticality. Recent observations have complicated this picture, revealing filaments as a mess of apparently…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
Asymmetries and anisotropies are widespread in biological systems, including in the structure and dynamics of cilia and eukaryotic flagella. These microscopic, hair-like appendages exhibit asymmetric beating patterns that break…
We study structural properties of a ring polymeric melt confined in a film in comparison to a linear counterpart using molecular dynamics simulations. Local structure orderings of ring and linear polymers in the vicinity of the surface are…
We study the dynamics of an entangled, isotropic solution of polar filaments coupled by molecular motors which generate relative motion of the filaments in two and three dimensions. We investigate the stability of the homogeneous state for…
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…
Motivated by the observation of highly unstable flowing states in suspensions of microtubules and kinesin, we analyze a model of mutually-propelled filaments suspended in a solvent. The system undergoes a mean-field isotropic-nematic…
Aggregation of like-charged polymers is widely observed in biological and soft matter systems. In many systems, bundles are formed when a short-range attraction of diverse physical origin like charge-bridging, hydrogen-bonding or…
Crosslinks and molecular motors play an important role in the organization of cytoskeletal filament networks. Here we incorporate the effect of crosslinks into our model of polar motor-filament organization [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 71}, 050901…
Flutter instability in an infinite medium is a form of material instability corresponding to the occurrence of complex conjugate squares of the acceleration wave velocities. Although its occurrence is known to be possible in elastoplastic…
Inspired by recent experiments of cells accumulating on anisotropic substrates, we study a two-dimensional, compressible, isotropic, active fluid in the presence of anisotropic friction. We find that regions of anisotropic friction that are…
We make use of the previously developed formalism for a monomer ensemble and include angular dependence of the segments of the polymer chains thus described. In particular we show how to deal with stiffness when the polymer chain is…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…