Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 46: Posters - Biomaterials and Biopolymers
BP 46.5: Poster
Mittwoch, 9. März 2016, 17:00–19:00, Poster C
Programming mechanics in semiflexible DNA tube networks — •Carsten Schuldt1,2, Tina Händler1,2, Martin Glaser1,2, Tom Golde1,2, Jessica Lorenz2, Jörg Schnauß1,2, Josef A. Käs1,2, and David M. Smith2 — 1Soft Matter Physics Division, Institute for Experimental Physics I, University of Leipzig, Germany — 2Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology, Leipzig, Germany
Biologically evolved materials are often used as inspiration in the both the development of new materials as well as examinations into the underlying physical principles governing their general behavior. One prominent example is the semiflexible polymer actin and its set of modulatory proteins and motors. Here, a major goal is to understand the emergent viscoelastic properties of networks assembled from individual filaments. Impossible with actin, we assess the impact of the filamentous rigidity (persistence length lp) on network mechanics in in vitro experiments. We employ programmable DNA tubes comparable to actin but tunable in their circumference and therefore their lp.
According to the well established tube model, network elasticity G0 should drop with increasing lp. Here, we show that networks made of DNA tubes resemble many of the characteristics of actin. However, we find that network elasticity increases linearly with filaments stiffness G0 ∼ lp. Since our observations are in strong contrast to the theoretical predictions, we conclude that the current tube model describes the bulk elasticity inadequately and demands theoretical revision.