Computational Analysis of Viscoelastic Properties of Crosslinked Actin Networks
Figure 6
Importance and effects of extensional stiffness of actin filaments in prestrained networks.
(A) Color-map of the prestrained network with γ = 0.55 (red: highly stretched bonds, gray: intermediately stretched bonds, blue: least stretched bonds.). (B) Similar plot showing only actin filaments with bonds stretched by more than 0.5%. (C,D) Influence of the extensional stiffness of actin filaments, κs,A, on G′ and G″ for a network crosslinked by ACPC (R = 0.021) at (C) γ = 0.55 and (D) γ = 0. Solid symbols: G′, and open symbols: G″ with κs,A = 1.69×10−2 (black circles), 3.38×10−3 (red triangles), and 6.76×10−4 N/m (blue diamonds) (E) G′ at fs = 3.16 Hz as a function of prestress, τ0, for κs,A = 6.764×10−4 (red triangles) and 0.01691 N/m (black circles). G′ of both cases remains nearly constant at low prestress, but starts to increase above ∼0.1 Pa. The behavior is similar for the two values of κs,A except that lower κs,A leads to a slight reduction in both the level and slope (∼0.7, dashed line) of G′ above the threshold stress level.