Related papers: Functionality of disorder in muscle mechanics
Passive mechanical response of skeletal muscles at fast time scales is dominated by long range interactions inducing cooperative behavior without breaking the detailed balance. This leads to such unusual "material properties" as negative…
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…
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…
A field-theoretical description of the behavior of disordered, elastically isotropic, compressible systems characterized by two order parameters at the bicritical and tetracritical points is presented. The description is performed in the…
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…
Many biological processes involve the action of molecular motors that interact with the cell cytoskeleton. Some processes, such as the transport of cargoes is achieved mainly by the action of individual motors. Other, such as cell motility…
An actin filament contacting myosin molecules as a functional unit of muscle contraction induces magnetic dipoles along the filament when ATP molecules to be hydrolyzed are available there. The induced magnetic dipoles are coherent over the…
Responding mechanically to environmental requests, muscles show a surprisingly large variety of functions. The studies of in vivo cycling muscles qualified skeletal muscles into four principal locomotor patterns: motor, brake, strut, and…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
Actin is a key component of the cytoskeleton, which plays central roles in cell motility, division, growth, and tensile strength. To enable this wide range of transient mechanical processes and properties, networks of actin filaments…
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…
Myosin II isoforms with varying mechanochemistry and filament size interact with filamentous actin (F-actin) networks to generate contractile forces in cells. How their properties control force production in environments with varying…
The human body is a complex organism whose gross mechanical properties are enabled by an interconnected musculoskeletal network controlled by the nervous system. The nature of musculoskeletal interconnection facilitates stability, voluntary…
Actomyosin contractility is essential for biological force generation, and is well understood in highly organized structures such as striated muscle. Additionally, actomyosin bundles devoid of this organization are known to contract both in…
The structural reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is facilitated through the action of motor proteins that crosslink the actin filaments and transport them relative to each other. Here, we present a combined experimental-computational…
We discover a qualitatively new behavior for systems where the load transfer has limiting stress amplification as in real fiber composites. We find that the disorder is a relevant field leading to tri--criticality, separating a first-order…
Active filaments are a workhorse for propulsion and actuation across biology, soft robotics and mechanical metamaterials. However, artificial active rods suffer from limited robustness and adaptivity because they rely on external control,…
The cytoskeleton is a model active matter system that controls diverse cellular processes from division to motility. While both active actomyosin dynamics and actin-microtubule interactions are key to the cytoskeleton's versatility and…
The cytoskeleton relies on diverse populations of motors, filaments, and binding proteins acting in concert to enable non-equilibrium processes ranging from mitosis to chemotaxis. Its versatile reconfigurability, programmed by interactions…
Two classes of models of driven disordered systems that exhibit history-dependent dynamics are discussed. The first class incorporates local inertia in the dynamics via nonmonotonic stress transfer between adjacent degrees of freedom. The…