Issue |
EPL
Volume 107, Number 6, September 2014
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 68002 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/107/68002 | |
Published online | 12 September 2014 |
Crunching biofilament rings
1 Institut Charles Sadron, CNRS-UdS - 23 Rue du Loess, BP 84047, 67034 Strasbourg cedex 2, France
2 Equipe BioPhysStat, LCP- A2MC, Université de Lorraine - 1 boulevard Arago, 57070 Metz, France
Received: 2 July 2014
Accepted: 27 August 2014
We discuss a curious example for the collective mechanical behavior of coupled non-linear monomer units entrapped in a circular filament. Within a simple model we elucidate how multistability of monomer units and exponentially large degeneracy of the filament's ground state emerge as a collective feature of the closed filament. Surprisingly, increasing the monomer frustration, i.e., the bending prestrain within the circular filament, leads to a conformational softening of the system. The phenomenon, that we term polymorphic crunching, is discussed and applied to a possible scenario for membrane tube deformation by switchable dynamin or FtsZ filaments. We find an important role of cooperative inter-unit interaction for efficient ring-induced membrane fission.
PACS: 82.35.Pq – Biopolymers, biopolymerization / 87.16.Ka – Filaments, microtubules, their networks, and supramolecular assemblies
© EPLA, 2014
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.