Stretching weakly bending filaments with spontaneous curvature in two dimensions

Abstract

Some important biomolecules (for instance, bacterial FtsZ and eukaryotic DNA) are known to posses spontaneous (intrinsic) curvature. Using a simple extension of the wormlike chain model, we study the response of a weakly bending filament in two dimensions to a pulling force applied at its ends (a configuration common in classical in-vitro experiments and relevant to several in-vivo cell cases). The spontaneous curvature of such a chain or filament can in general be arc-length dependent and we study a case of sinusoidal variation, from which an arbitrary case can be reconstructed via Fourier transformation. We obtain analytic results for the force-extension relationship and the width of transverse fluctuations. We show that spontaneous-curvature undulations can affect the force-extension behavior even in relatively flexible filaments with a persistence length smaller than the contour length.

7 pages, 4 figures; typos corrected, minor changes, final version as published in PRE

References in corpus (4)

• Stretching Instability of Helical Spring
• Elasticity of semiflexible polymers in two dimensions
• Stretching helical nano-springs at finite temperature
• Disordered, stretched, and semiflexible biopolymers in two dimensions

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Inequivalence of fixed-force and fixed-extension statistical ensembles for a flexible polymer tethered to a planar substrate
• Force-extension relation of cross-linked anisotropic polymer networks
• Elasticity of cross-linked semiflexible biopolymers under tension
• Elastic behavior of a semiflexible polymer in 3D subject to compression and stretching forces
• Stretching semiflexible filaments with quenched disorder
• Tensile elasticity of semiflexible polymers with hinge defects
• The effect of elastic disorder on single electron transport through a buckled nanotube
• The elasticity of semiflexible polymers with reversible spontaneous curvature in two dimensions