skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Compression-induced buckling of a semiflexible filament in two and three dimensions
The ability of biomolecules to exert forces on their surroundings or resist compression from the environment is essential in a variety of biologically relevant contexts. For filaments in the low-temperature limit and under a constant compressive force, Euler buckling theory predicts a sudden transition from a compressed state to a bent state in these slender rods. In this paper, we use a mean-field theory to show that if a semiflexible chain is compressed at a finite temperature with a fixed end-to-end distance (permitting fluctuations in the compressive forces), it exhibits a continuous phase transition to a buckled state at a critical level of compression. We determine a quantitatively accurate prediction of the transverse position distribution function of the midpoint of the chain that indicates this transition. We find that the mean compressive forces are non-monotonic as the extension of the filament varies, consistent with the observation that strongly buckled filaments are less able to bear an external load. We also find that for the fixed extension (isometric) ensemble, the buckling transition does not coincide with the local minimum of the mean force (in contrast to Euler buckling). We also show that the theory is highly sensitive to fluctuations in length in two dimensions and the buckling transition can still be accurately recovered by accounting for those fluctuations. These predictions may be useful in understanding the behavior of filamentous biomolecules compressed by fluctuating forces, relevant in a variety of biological contexts.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2019745
PAR ID:
10416923
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
The Journal of Chemical Physics
Volume:
157
Issue:
10
ISSN:
0021-9606
Page Range / eLocation ID:
104903
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; (, Extreme Mechanics Letters)
    Understanding thin sheets, ranging from the macro to the nanoscale, can allow control of mechanical properties such as deformability. Out-of-plane buckling due to in-plane compression can be a key feature in designing new materials. While thin-plate theory can predict critical buckling thresholds for thin frames and nanoribbons at very low temperatures, a unifying framework to describe the e↵ects of thermal fluctuations on buckling at more elevated temperatures presents subtle difficulties. We develop and test a theoretical approach that includes both an in-plane compression and an outof- plane perturbing field to describe the mechanics of thermalised ribbons above and below the buckling transition. We show that, once the elastic constants are renormalised to take into account the ribbon’s width (in units of the thermal length scale), we can map the physics onto a mean-field treatment of buckling, provided the length is short compared to a ribbon persistence length. Our theoretical predictions are checked by extensive molecular dynamics simulations of thin thermalised ribbons under axial compression. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; (, Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology)
    Cellular unjamming is the collective fluidization of cell motion and has been linked to many biological processes, including development, wound repair, and tumor growth. In tumor growth, the uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells in a confined space generates mechanical compressive stress. However, because multiple cellular and molecular mechanisms may be operating simultaneously, the role of compressive stress in unjamming transitions during cancer progression remains unknown. Here, we investigate which mechanism dominates in a dense, mechanically stressed monolayer. We find that long-term mechanical compression triggers cell arrest in benign epithelial cells and enhances cancer cell migration in transitions correlated with cell shape, leading us to examine the contributions of cell–cell adhesion and substrate traction in unjamming transitions. We show that cadherin-mediated cell–cell adhesion regulates differential cellular responses to compressive stress and is an important driver of unjamming in stressed monolayers. Importantly, compressive stress does not induce the epithelial–mesenchymal transition in unjammed cells. Furthermore, traction force microscopy reveals the attenuation of traction stresses in compressed cells within the bulk monolayer regardless of cell type and motility. As traction within the bulk monolayer decreases with compressive pressure, cancer cells at the leading edge of the cell layer exhibit sustained traction under compression. Together, strengthened intercellular adhesion and attenuation of traction forces within the bulk cell sheet under compression lead to fluidization of the cell layer and may impact collective cell motion in tumor development and breast cancer progression. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; (, Proc. SPIE 11586, Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication XI)
    Lakhtakia, Akhlesh; Martín-Palma, Raúl J.; Knez, Mato (Ed.)
    This paper investigates the effect of resistive forces that arise in compressed fluidic artificial muscles (FAMs) within a variable recruitment bundle. Much like our skeletal muscle organs that selectively recruit different number of motor fibers depending on the load demand, a variable recruitment FAM bundle adaptively activates the minimum number of motor units (MUs) to increase its overall efficiency. A variable recruitment bundle may operate in different recruitment states (RSs) during which only a subset of the FAMs within a bundle are activated. In such cases, a difference in strain occurs between active FAMs and inactive/low-pressure FAMs. This strain difference results in the compression of inactive/lowpressure FAMs causing them to exert a resistive force opposing the force output of active FAMs. This paper presents experimental measurements for a FAM for both tensile and compressive regions. The data is used to simulate the overall force-strain space of a variable recruitment bundle for when resistive force effects are neglected and when they are included. Counterintuitively, an initial decrease in bundle free strain is observed when a transition to a higher RS is made due to the presence of resistive forces. We call this phenomenon the free strain gradient reversal of a variable recruitment bundle. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the implications of this phenomenon. 
    more » « less
  4. ; (, Physical Review E)
    The buckling of thin elastic sheets is a classic mechanical instability that occurs over a wide range of scales. In the extreme limit of atomically thin membranes like graphene, thermal fluctuations can dramatically modify such mechanical instabilities. We investigate here the delicate interplay of boundary conditions, nonlinear mechanics, and thermal fluctuations in controlling buckling of confined thin sheets under isotropic compression. We identify two inequivalent mechanical ensembles based on the boundaries at constant strain (isometric) or at constant stress (isotensional) conditions. Remarkably, in the isometric ensemble, boundary conditions induce a novel long-ranged nonlinear interaction between the local tilt of the surface at distant points. This interaction combined with a spontaneously generated thermal tension leads to a renormalization group description of two distinct universality classes for thermalized buckling, realizing a mechanical variant of Fisher-renormalized critical exponents. We formulate a complete scaling theory of buckling as an unusual phase transition with a size-dependent critical point, and we discuss experimental ramifications for the mechanical manipulation of ultrathin nanomaterials. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; et al (, Nucleic Acids Research)
    null (Ed.)
    Abstract Single molecule force spectroscopy is a powerful approach to probe the structure, conformational changes, and kinetic properties of biological and synthetic macromolecules. However, common approaches to apply forces to biomolecules require expensive and cumbersome equipment and relatively large probes such as beads or cantilevers, which limits their use for many environments and makes integrating with other methods challenging. Furthermore, existing methods have key limitations such as an inability to apply compressive forces on single molecules. We report a nanoscale DNA force spectrometer (nDFS), which is based on a DNA origami hinge with tunable mechanical and dynamic properties. The angular free energy landscape of the nDFS can be engineered across a wide range through substitution of less than 5% of the strand components. We further incorporate a removable strut that enables reversible toggling of the nDFS between open and closed states to allow for actuated application of tensile and compressive forces. We demonstrate the ability to apply compressive forces by inducing a large bend in a 249bp DNA molecule, and tensile forces by inducing DNA unwrapping of a nucleosome sample. These results establish a versatile tool for force spectroscopy and robust methods for designing nanoscale mechanical devices with tunable force application. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email