A universal attractive interaction between filaments at the cell scale
Abstract
Actin filaments and microtubules both often form bundles of parallel filaments within cells. Here, we shed light on a universal attractive interaction between two such parallel filaments. Indeed, the electrodynamic Casimir interaction between dielectric objects immersed in salted water at room or body temperature includes a universal contribution that is unscreened by the solvent and therefore long-ranged. We study this interaction between two parallel cylinders immersed in salted water with strong Debye screening. We show that its magnitude can largely exceed the energy scale of thermal fluctuations in the case of actin filaments and microtubules in cells. While multiple interactions exist between filaments in cells, this universal attractive interaction should thus have an important role, e.g. in bundle formation and cohesion.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.06006,
title = {A universal attractive interaction between filaments at the cell scale},
author = {Anne-Florence Bitbol and Hélène Berthoumieux and Benjamin Spreng and Paulo A. Maia Neto and Serge Reynaud},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.06006},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
18 pages, 5 figures. No change. This short report has been expanded into a longer paper arXiv:2306.14059