Shape Selection of Surface-Bound Helical Filaments: Biopolymers on Curved Membranes.

ABSTRACT: Motivated to understand the behavior of biological filaments interacting with membranes of various types, we employ a theoretical model for the shape and thermodynamics of intrinsically helical filaments bound to curved membranes. We show that filament-surface interactions lead to a host of nonuniform shape equilibria, in which filaments progressively unwind from their native twist with increasing surface interaction and surface curvature, ultimately adopting uniform-contact curved shapes. The latter effect is due to nonlinear coupling between elastic twist and bending of filaments on anisotropically curved surfaces such as the cylindrical surfaces considered here. Via a combination of numerical solutions and asymptotic analysis of shape equilibria, we show that filament conformations are

SUBMITTER: Quint DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5052453 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature