ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2009
An active biopolymer network controlled by molecular motors.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 141 papers.
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Who cites it
141 citing papers in PubMed, 415 citations in OpenAlex.
- Measuring the Elastic Properties of Living Cells.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2027Article
- Contractile to extensile transitions and mechanical adaptability enabled by activity in cytoskeletal structures.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Tunable yielding and emergent rheology in amorphous solids with active particle doping.Nature communications · 2026Article
- State-dependent energy conversion produces degenerate dissipation in active actomyosin networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Bottom-Up Synthesis and Active Assembly of DNA Networks by Biomolecular Nanomachines.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- Investigating active dynamics of contractile actomyosin gels with micro particle image velocimetry (micro-PIV) analysis.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Effects of Knotting on the Collapse of Active Ring Polymers.Macromolecules · 2025Article
- Article
- Deciphering Mechanochemical Influences of Emergent Actomyosin Crosstalk Using QCM-D.Cellular and molecular bioengineering · 2025Article
- Characteristic frequencies of localized stress relaxation in scaling-law rheology of living cells.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Measuring emergent mechanical changes in cytoskeletal ensemblesFrontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2025Article
- Deciphering Mechanochemical Influences of Emergent Actomyosin Crosstalk using QCM-D.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- ATP-induced reconfiguration of the micro-viscoelasticity of cardiac and skeletal myosin solutions.Applied physics letters · 2024Article
- Scaling-law mechanical marker for liver fibrosis diagnosis and drug screening through machine learning.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2024Article
- Evidence that tissue recoil in the earlyMolecular biology of the cell · 2023Article
- Appetizer on soft matter physics concepts in mechanobiology.Development, growth & differentiation · 2023Review
- Micro-mechanical response and power-law exponents from the longitudinal fluctuations of F-actin solutions.Soft matter · 2023Article
- Activity-dependent glassy cell mechanics Ⅰ: Mechanical properties measured with active microrheology.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Network dynamics of the nonlinear power-law relaxation of cell cortex.Biophysical journal · 2022Article
- Competing instabilities reveal how to rationally design and control active crosslinked gels.Nature communications · 2022Article
81 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
We describe an active polymer network in which processive molecular motors control network elasticity. This system consists of actin filaments cross-linked by filamin A (FLNa) and contracted by bipolar filaments of muscle myosin II. The myosin motors stiffen the network by more than two orders of magnitude by pulling on actin filaments anchored in the network by FLNa cross-links, thereby generating internal stress. The stiffening response closely mimics the effects of external stress applied by mechanical shear. Both internal and external stresses can drive the network into a highly nonlinear, stiffened regime. The active stress reaches values that are equivalent to an external stress of 14 Pa, consistent with a 1-pN force per myosin head. This active network mimics many mechanical properties of cells and suggests that adherent cells exert mechanical control by operating in a nonlinear regime where cell stiffness is sensitive to changes in motor activity. This design principle may be applicable to engineering novel biologically inspired, active materials that adjust their own stiffness by internal catalytic control.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.