Related papers: Microscale velocity-dependent unbinding generates …
Biological actuators -- from myosin motors to muscles -- follow Hill's model where a dimensionless parameter $\alpha$ captures the nonlinear coupling between contraction rate and force generation. Our prior work identified a characteristic…
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…
Protein-ligand interactions are crucial for a wide range of physiological processes. Many cellular functions result in these non-covalent `bonds' being mechanically strained, and this can be integral to proper cellular function. Broadly,…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
Non-processive molecular motors have to work together in ensembles in order to generate appreciable levels of force or movement. In skeletal muscle, for example, hundreds of myosin II molecules cooperate in thick filaments. In non-muscle…
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 address the well-known limitation of the Huxley and Simmons 1971 (HS) model. It is a statement that at physiological value of stiffness in the actomyosin complex, the distribution of the myosin motors becomes microscopically uniform (all…
We here report on non-equilibrium targeted Molecular Dynamics simulations as tool for the estimation of protein-ligand unbinding kinetics. Correlating simulations with experimental data from SPR kinetics measurements and X-ray…
Molecular motors walk along filaments until they detach stochastically with a force-dependent unbinding rate. Here, we show that this unbinding rate can be obtained from the analysis of experimental data of molecular motors moving in…
Receptor-ligand interactions are essential for biological function and their binding strength is commonly explained in terms of static lock-and-key models based on molecular complementarity. However, detailed information of the full…
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…
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…
Based on a detailed crossbridge model for individual myosin II motors, we systematically study the influence of mechanical load and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentration on small myosin II ensembles made from different isoforms. For…
We study the high-frequency micro-mechanical response of suspensions composed by cardiac and skeletal muscle myosin by optical trapping interferometry. We observe that in low ionic strength solutions upon the addition of magnesium adenosine…
Muscles sense internally generated and externally applied forces, responding to these in a coordinated hierarchical manner at different time scales. The center of the basic unit of the muscle, the sarcomeric M-band, is perfectly placed to…
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…
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…
Almost 60 years ago Andrew Huxley with his seminal paper \cite{Huxley1957} laid the foundation of modern muscle modeling, linking chemical events to mechanical performance. He described mechanics and energetics of muscle contraction through…
Artificial muscles are essential for compliant musculoskeletal robotics but complicate control due to nonlinear multiphysics dynamics. Hydraulically amplified electrostatic (HASEL) actuators, a class of soft artificial muscles, offer high…
The mechanical properties of cells are dominated by the cytoskeleton, an interconnected network of long elastic filaments. The connections between the filaments are provided by crosslinking proteins, which constitute, next to the filaments,…