LOCALIZED BUCKLING OF A LATERALLY CONSTRAINED MICROTUBULE
Mingzhao Jin (University of Alberta), Chongqing Ru ()
SES Medal Symposium in honor of D.J. Steigmann
Wed 9:00 - 10:30
MacMillan 115
Microtubules in living cells can bear much higher compressive force than a free-standing microtubule in vitro. To investigate this phenomenon, we modeled the buckling of microtubules with randomly distributed cross linkers attached by the finite element method. The present numerical model predicted the length independent buckling modes of microtubule, which is characterized by the localized deflection patter at the end of force application. The simulated pattern bears great similarity with the observations in some microtubule bucking experiments, however, is in contradiction to the predicted uniform multi-waves pattern from the previously adopted elastic foundation model. Moreover, the critical force for localized buckling predicted by the present model is only about one sixth of those given by the elastic foundation model. Based on available spacing and spring constant parameters of cross linkers, the critical force and wavelength of localized buckling predicted by our model are in reasonable agreement with experiments.