Motor-free contractility of active biopolymer networks.
Phys Rev E
; 108(4-1): 044405, 2023 Oct.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37978629
ABSTRACT
Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust motor-free mechanism that can generate contraction in biopolymer networks without the need for substrate polarity. We show that contractility is a natural consequence of active binding-unbinding of crosslinkers that breaks the principle of detailed balance, together with the asymmetric force-extension response of semiflexible biopolymers. We have extended our earlier work to discuss the motor-free contraction of viscoelastic biopolymer networks. We calculate the resulting contractile velocity using a microscopic model and show that it can be reduced to a simple coarse-grained model under certain limits. Our model may provide an explanation of recent reports of motor-independent contractility in cells. Our results also suggest a mechanism for generating contractile forces in synthetic active materials.
Texto completo:
1
Bases de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Miosinas
/
Modelos Biológicos
Límite:
Animals
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Phys Rev E
Año:
2023
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Estados Unidos