Related papers: Filament-motor protein system under loading: insta…
Within individual bacteria, we combine force-dependent polymerization dynamics of individual MreB protofilaments with an elastic model of protofilament bundles buckled into helical configurations. We use variational techniques and…
The bacterial flagellar motor is an ion-powered transmembrane protein complex which drives swimming in many bacterial species. The motor consists of a cytoplasmic 'rotor' ring and a number of 'stator' units, which are bound to the cell wall…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
We analyze rate-dependent tipping in a fast/slow system with an equilibrium near the fold of a critical manifiold. We find a Hopf bifurcation as the rate parameter increases in the reduced co-moving system. This implies the growth of a…
We discuss theoretical models for the cooperative binding dynamics of ligands to substrates, such as dimeric motor proteins to microtubules or more extended macromolecules like tropomyosin to actin filaments. We study the effects of steric…
The necking instability is a precursor to tensile failure and rupture of materials. A quasistatically loaded free-standing uniaxial specimen typically exhibits necking at a single location, corresponding to a long wavelength bifurcation…
It has been found in in vitro experiments that cytoskeletal filaments driven by molecular motors show finite diffusion in sliding motion even in the long filament limit [Y. Imafuku et al., Biophys. J. 70 (1996) 878-886; N. Noda et al.,…
A model for filament buckling at finite temperatures is presented. Starting from the classical worm-like chain model under constant compression, we use a mean-field approach for filament inextensibility to find the complete partition…
A synergetic model describing the state of an ultrathin lubricant layer squeezed between two atomically smooth solid surfaces operating in the boundary friction mode has been developed further. To explain the presence of different operation…
Filament based intracellular transport involves the collective action of molecular motor proteins. Experimental evidences suggest that microtubule (MT) filament bound motor proteins such as {\it kinesins} weakly interact among themselves…
The production of mechanical stresses in living organisms largely relies on localized, force-generating active units embedded in filamentous matrices. Numerical simulations of discrete fiber networks with fixed boundaries have shown that…
The mitotic spindle lies at the heart of the spatio-temporal control over cellular components during cell division. The spindle consists of microtubules, which are not only crosslinked by motor proteins but also by passive binding proteins.…
Planning accurate manipulation for deformable objects requires prediction of their state. The prediction is often complicated by a loss of stability that may result in collapse of the deformable object. In this work, stability of a fabric…
In this article we examine the dynamics of a colloidal particle driven by a modulated force over a sinusoidal optical potential energy landscape. Coupling between the competing frequencies of the modulated drive and that of particle motion…
The dynamics of a flexible filament sedimenting in a viscous fluid are explored analytically and numerically. Compared to the well-studied case of sedimenting rigid rods, the introduction of filament compliance is shown to cause a…
Living matter moves, deforms, and organizes itself. In cells this is made possible by networks of polymer filaments and crosslinking molecules that connect filaments to each other and that act as motors to do mechanical work on the network.…
We study slender, helical elastic rods subject to distributed forces and moments. Focussing on the case when the helix axis remains straight, we employ the method of multiple scales to systematically derive an 'equivalent-rod' theory from…
Protein sequences serve as a natural record of the evolutionary constraints that shape their functional structures. We show that it is possible to use only sequence information to go beyond predicting native structures and global stability…
We study the behavior of vortex filaments subject to a uniform density of phase twist in oscillatory media described by the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. The first instability is a supercritical Hopf bifurcation to stable propagating…
Protein molecules often self-assemble by means of non-covalent physical bonds to form extended filaments, such as amyloids, F-actin, intermediate filaments, and many others. The kinetics of filament growth is limited by the disassembly…