2006/07/11 by Aphrodite Ahmadi, M. Cristina Marchetti, Tanniemola B. Liverpool +1 · 4 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Blood properties and coagulation #Cellular Mechanics and Interactions #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Classical mechanics #Condensed matter physics #Homogeneous #Isotropy #Liquid crystal #Materials science #Micro and Nano Robotics #Optics #Physical chemistry #Physics #Polar #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Polymer #Protein filament #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Thermodynamics #Work (physics) #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.74.061913
published as Phys. Rev. E 74, 061913 (2006) · 47 pages, 12 figures
arxiv created 2006/07/11 · openalex publication_date 2006/12/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We describe the large-scale collective behavior of solutions of polar biofilaments and stationary and mobile crosslinkers. Both mobile and stationary crosslinkers induce filament alignment promoting either polar or nematic order. In addition, mobile crosslinkers, such as clusters of motor proteins, exchange forces and torques among the filaments and render the homogeneous states unstable via filament bundling. We start from a Smoluchowski equation for rigid filaments in solutions, where pairwise crosslink-mediated interactions among the filaments yield translational and rotational currents. The large-scale properties of the system are described in terms of continuum equations for filament and motor densities, polarization, and alignment tensor obtained by coarse-graining the Smoluchovski equation. The possible homogeneous and inhomogeneous states of the systems are obtained as stable solutions of the dynamical equations and are characterized in terms of experimentally accessible parameters. We make contact with work by other authors and show that our model allows for an estimate of the various parameters in the hydrodynamic equations in terms of physical properties of the crosslinkers.