Elasticity of Stiff Biopolymers
arXiv:0710.1465 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.76.061801
Abstract
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension relations and compare these with numerical treatments. We note the important role of boundary conditions in determining force-extension relations. The theoretical predictions presented here can be tested against single molecule experiments on neurofilaments and cytoskeletal filaments like actin and microtubules. Our work is motivated by the buckling of the cytoskeleton of a cell under compression, a phenomenon of interest to biology.
Submitted for publication, five pages, three figures
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Cited by in corpus (7)
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- Exact solution for the force-extension relation of a semiflexible polymer under compression
- Tube width fluctuations of entangled stiff polymers
- Stretching semiflexible filaments with quenched disorder
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