Active fluidization of polymer networks through molecular motors

D. Humphrey, C. Duggan, D. Saha, D. Smith and J. Käs ()
Additional contact information
D. Humphrey: University of Texas at Austin
C. Duggan: University of Texas at Austin
D. Saha: University of Texas at Austin
D. Smith: University of Texas at Austin
J. Käs: University of Texas at Austin

Nature, 2002, vol. 416, issue 6879, 413-416

Abstract: Abstract Entangled polymer solutions and melts exhibit elastic, solid-like resistance to quick deformations and a viscous, fluid-like response to slow deformations. This viscoelastic behaviour reflects the dynamics of individual polymer chains driven by brownian motion1: since individual chains can only move in a snake-like fashion through the mesh of surrounding polymer molecules, their diffusive transport, described by reptation2,3,4, is so slow that the relaxation of suddenly imposed stress is delayed. Entangled polymer solutions and melts therefore elastically resist deforming motions that occur faster than the stress relaxation time. Here we show that the protein myosin II permits active control over the viscoelastic behaviour of actin filament solutions. We find that when each actin filament in a polymerized actin solution interacts with at least one myosin minifilament, the stress relaxation time of the polymer solution is significantly shortened. We attribute this effect to myosin's action as a ‘molecular motor’, which allows it to interact with randomly oriented actin filaments and push them through the solution, thus enhancing longitudinal filament motion. By superseding reptation with sliding motion, the molecular motors thus overcome a fundamental principle of complex fluids: that only depolymerization makes an entangled, isotropic polymer solution fluid for quick deformations.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/416413a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6879:d:10.1038_416413a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/416413a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().