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Muscle contraction: a mechanical perspective
Mathematical Biology| Speaker: | Lev Truskinovsky, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and École Polytechnique |
| Location: | 2112 MSB |
| Start time: | Mon, Apr 4 2011, 3:10PM |
Description
In this talk we discuss a possibility to construct a purely mechanical
analog of the conventional chemo-mechanical model of muscle contraction.
To remain in the mechanical framework we abandon the description of
kinetics of the power stroke in terms of jump processes and instead
resolve the continuous stochastic evolution on an appropriate energy
landscape. In general physical terms, we replace hard spin chemical
variables by soft spin variables representing
mechanical snap-springs. This allows us to treat the case of small and
even disappearing barriers and, more importantly, to incorporate the
mechanical representation of the power stroke into the theory of
Brownian ratchets. The model provides the simplest non-chemical
description for the main stages of the biochemical Lymn-Taylor cycle and
may be used as a basis for the artificial micro-mechanical reproduction
of the muscle contraction mechanism.