2020/02/29 by Sihan Chen, Tomer Markovich, F. C. MacKintosh · 21 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Biological system #Biology #Biophysics #Cellular Mechanics and Interactions #Computer science #Contractility #Contraction (grammar) #Mechanism (biology) #Micro and Nano Robotics #Microtubule and mitosis dynamics #Molecular motor #Myosin #Physics #Ratchet #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.208101
published in Physical Review Letters 125(20), 208101 (American Physical Society)
arxiv created 2020/11/02 · openalex publication_date 2020/11/13 · arxiv updated 2020/11/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Animal cells form contractile structures to promote various functions, from cell motility to cell division. Force generation in these structures is often due to molecular motors such as myosin that require polar substrates for their function. Here, we propose a motor-free mechanism that can generate contraction in biopolymer networks without the need for polarity. This mechanism is based on active binding and unbinding of cross-linkers that breaks the principle of detailed balance, together with the asymmetric force-extension response of semiflexible biopolymers. We find that these two ingredients can generate steady state contraction via a nonthermal, ratchetlike process. We calculate the resulting force-velocity relation using both coarse-grained and microscopic models.