Semiflexible polymer in a gliding assay: reentrant transition, role of turnover and activity

Abstract

We consider a model of an extensible semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a motility assay of motor proteins represented explicitly as active harmonic linkers. Their heads bind stochastically to polymer segments within a capture radius, and extend along the filament in a directed fashion before detaching. Both the extension and detachment rates are load-dependent and generate an active drive on the filament. The filament undergoes a first order phase transition from open chain to spiral conformations and shows a reentrant behavior in both the active extension and the turnover, defined as the ratio of attachment-detachment rates. Associated with the phase transition, the size and shape of the polymer changes non-monotonically, and the relevant autocorrelation functions display double-exponential decay. The corresponding correlation times show a maximum signifying the dominance of spirals. The orientational dynamics captures the rotation of spirals, and its correlation time decays with activity as a power law.

13 pages, 14 figures; version accepted for publication in Soft Matter

References in corpus (4)

• The physics of active polymers and filaments
• Dynamics of active filaments in porous media
• Conformation and dynamics of a self-avoiding active flexible polymer
• Why Microtubules run in Circles - Mechanical Hysteresis of the Tubulin Lattice

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Wall-anchored semiflexible polymer under large amplitude oscillatory shear flow
• Density and inertia effects on two-dimensional active semiflexible filament suspensions
• Active Polymer Behavior in Two Dimensions: A Comparative Analysis of Tangential and Push-Pull Models
• Cooperation and competition in the collective drive by motor proteins: Mean active force, fluctuations, and self-load
• Active Brownian particle under stochastic position and orientation resetting in a harmonic trap
• Spiral folding of a flexible chain of chiral active particles
• Self-attractive semiflexible polymers under an external force field
• Active chain spirograph: Dynamic patterns formed in extensible chains due to follower activity