Related papers: Crosslinker mobility weakens transient polymer net…

We study the elasticity of cross-linked networks of thermally fluctuating stiff polymers. As compared to their purely mechanical counterparts, it is shown that these thermal networks have a qualitatively different elastic response. By…

Gels made of telechelic polymers connected by reversible crosslinkers are a versatile design platform for biocompatible viscoelastic materials. Their linear response to a step strain displays a fast, near-exponential relaxation when using…

Physical aging in polymers is a fundamental yet poorly understood phenomenon, as diverse macromolecular systems exhibit remarkably similar slow dynamics. Through molecular dynamics simulations of physically crosslinked networks composed of…

Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…

Biopolymer networks from the intracellular to tissue scale display high rigidity and tensile stress while having coordinations well below the normal threshold for mechanical rigidity. The elastic filaments in these networks are often…

We study the elastic deformations in a cross-linked polymer network film triggered by the binding of submicron particles with a sticky surface, mimicking the interactions of viral pathogens with thin films of stimulus-responsive polymeric…

Disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks exhibit a low linear elastic shear modulus at small strains, but stiffen dramatically at high strains. Experiments have shown that the elastic modulus can increase by up to three…

A coarse-grained molecular simulation approach originally developed for entangled polymeric liquids is extended to model the mechanical behavior of long-fiber networks. The model, based on the slip-link picture of chain entanglements,…

The dynamical properties of entangled polymers originate from the dynamic constraints due to the uncrossability between polymer chains. We propose a highly coarse-grained simulation model with transient bonds for such dynamically…

Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…

Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust…

We construct a coarse-grained model of parallel actin bundles crosslinked by compact, globular bundling proteins, such as fascin and espin, necessary components of filapodial and mechanosensory bundles. Consistent with structural…

The freely jointed chain is often applied to model the thermodynamics of single polymer chains, but the traditional formulation of the model lacks internal energy changes due to bond stretching. For this reason, the extensible freely…

Intermediate filaments are cytoskeletal proteins that are key regulators of cell mechanics, a role which is intrinsically tied to their hierarchical structure and their unique ability to accommodate large axial strains. However, how the…

We consider a biopolymer bundle consisting of filaments that are crosslinked together. The crosslinks are reversible: they can dynamically bind and unbind adjacent filament pairs as controlled by a binding enthalpy. The bundle is subjected…

An efficient numerical framework is presented for modeling viscoelasticity and permanent set of polymers. It is based on the hereditary integral form of transient network theory, in which polymer chains belong to distinct networks each with…

In this paper we present a network model to study the impact of spatial distribution of constituents, coupling between them and diffusive processes in the context of biological situations. The model is in terms of network of mobile elements…

We study two cross-linked polymer systems in the strong stretching regime. The first consists of two polymers sharing one endpoint, with the other two endpoints coupled by a harmonic potential. Within the weakly bending approximation, we…

Transport networks are crucial to the functioning of natural and technological systems. Nature features transport networks that are adaptive over a vast range of parameters, thus providing an impressive level of robustness in supply.…

The semiflexible F-actin network of the cytoskeleton is cross-linked by a variety of proteins including filamin, which contain Ig-domains that unfold under applied tension. We examine a simple semiflexible network model cross-linked by such…