Title

Mechanical Response of Active Gels

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Tanniemola B. Liverpool, University of Bristol
M. Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse UniversityFollow
J-F. Joanny, Institut Curie
J. Prost, E.S.P.C.I.

Document Type

Article

Date

7-18-2008

Keywords

condensed matter, soft condensed matter

Language

English

Disciplines

Physics

Description/Abstract

We study a model of an active gel of cross-linked semiflexible filaments with additional active linkers such as myosin II clusters. We show that the coupling of the elasticity of the semiflexible filaments to the mechanical properties of the motors leads to contractile behavior of the gel, in qualitative agreement with experimental observations. The motors, however, soften the zero frequency elastic constant of the gel. When the collective motor dynamics is incorporated in the model, a stiffening of the network at high frequencies is obtained. The frequency controlling the crossover between low and high frequency network elasticity is estimated in terms of microscopic properties of motors and filaments, and can be as low as 10^(-3)Hz.

Additional Information

This manuscript is from arXiv.org, for more information see http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3031

Recommended Citation

arXiv:0807.3031v1

Source

harvested from arXiv.org

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.