Pattern formation driven by nematic ordering of assembling biopolymers
Abstract
The biopolymers actin and microtubules are often in an ongoing assembling-disassembling state far from thermal equilibrium. Above a critical density this leads to spatially periodic patterns, as shown by a scaling argument and in terms of a phenomenological continuum model, which meets also Onsager’s statistical theory of the nematic-to-isotropic transition in the absence of reaction kinetics. This pattern forming process depends much on nonlinear effects and a common linear stability analysis of the isotropic distribution of the filaments is often misleading. The wave number of the pattern decreases with the assembling-disassembling rate and there is an uncommon discontinuous transition between the nematic and periodic states.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review E
- Pub Date:
- August 2004
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevE.70.022902
- arXiv:
- arXiv:cond-mat/0304635
- Bibcode:
- 2004PhRvE..70b2902Z
- Keywords:
-
- 87.16.-b;
- 47.54.+r;
- 64.70.-p;
- Subcellular structure and processes;
- Specific phase transitions;
- Soft Condensed Matter
- E-Print:
- 4 pages, 3 figures