Solid friction between soft filaments.
Nat Mater
; 14(6): 583-8, 2015 Jun.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25730393
ABSTRACT
Any macroscopic deformation of a filamentous bundle is necessarily accompanied by local sliding and/or stretching of the constituent filaments. Yet the nature of the sliding friction between two aligned filaments interacting through multiple contacts remains largely unexplored. Here, by directly measuring the sliding forces between two bundled F-actin filaments, we show that these frictional forces are unexpectedly large, scale logarithmically with sliding velocity as in solid-like friction, and exhibit complex dependence on the filaments' overlap length. We also show that a reduction of the frictional force by orders of magnitude, associated with a transition from solid-like friction to Stokes's drag, can be induced by coating F-actin with polymeric brushes. Furthermore, we observe similar transitions in filamentous microtubules and bacterial flagella. Our findings demonstrate how altering a filament's elasticity, structure and interactions can be used to engineer interfilament friction and thus tune the properties of fibrous composite materials.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Friction
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Language:
En
Journal:
Nat Mater
Journal subject:
CIENCIA
/
QUIMICA
Year:
2015
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States