The Interplay of Nonlinearity and Architecture in Equilibrium Cytoskeletal Mechanics

Abstract

The interplay between cytoskeletal architecture and the nonlinearity of the interactions due to bucklable filaments plays a key role in modulating the cell's mechanical stability and affecting its structural rearrangements. We study a model of cytoskeletal structure treating it as an amorphous network of hard centers rigidly cross-linked by nonlinear elastic strings, neglecting the effects of motorization. Using simulations along with a self-consistent phonon method, we show that this minimal model exhibits diverse thermodynamically stable mechanical phases that depend on excluded volume, crosslink concentration, filament length and stiffness. Within the framework set by the free energy functional formulation and making use of the random first order transition theory of structural glasses, we further estimate the characteristic densities for a kinetic glass transition to occur in this model system. Network connectivity strongly modulates the transition boundaries between various equilibrium phases, as well as the kinetic glass transition density.

17 pages, 18 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Constructing explicit magnetic analogies for the dynamics of glass forming liquids
• Statistical Mechanics of a Cat's Cradle

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Active contractility in actomyosin networks
• Mode-Coupling Theory for Active Brownian Particles
• Effective temperature and glassy dynamics of active matter
• Tensegrity and Motor-Driven Effective Interactions in a Model Cytoskeleton
• Motor-free Contractility in Active Gels
• Microscopic theory of the glassy dynamics of passive and active network materials
• Active patterning and asymmetric transport in a model actomyosin network