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Local Viscoelasticity of Biopolymer Solutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

B. Schnurr ,
F. Gittes ,
P. D. Olmsted ,
C. F. Schmidt  and
F. C. Mackintosh
B. Schnurr
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics & Biophys. Res. Div., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml 48109–1120
F. Gittes
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics & Biophys. Res. Div., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml 48109–1120
P. D. Olmsted
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
C. F. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics & Biophys. Res. Div., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml 48109–1120
F. C. Mackintosh
Affiliation:
Dept. of Physics & Biophys. Res. Div., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml 48109–1120
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Abstract

We describe a new, high-resolution technique for determining the local viscoelastic response of polymer gels on a micrometer scale. This is done by monitoring thermal fluctuations of embedded probe particles. We derive the relationship between the amplitude of fluctuations and the low-frequency storage modulus G′, as well as the relationship between the fluctuation power spectrum, measured between 0.1 Hz and 25kHz, and the complex shear modulus G((ω). For both, semiflexible F-actin solutions and flexible polyacrylamide (PAAm) gels we observe high-frequency power-law dependence in the spectra, which reflects the behavior of the shear modulus. However, we observe distinctly different scaling exponents for G((ω) in F-actin and PAAm gels—presumably due to the semiflexible nature of the actin filaments.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 463: Symposia EE – Statistical Mechanics in Physics and Biology , 1996 , 15
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1997

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