Functionality of disorder in muscle mechanics.
A salient feature of skeletal muscles is their ability to take up an applied slack in a $\textit{ms}$ time scale. Behind this passive phenomenon is a collective folding of a system of interacting bi-stable elements. These interactions have long range character and therefore the behavior of the system in force and length controlled ensembles is different. As a result, there are two adjacent but distinct critical points. We show that the account of steric incommensuration between myosin and actin filaments places the elementary force producing units of skeletal muscles close to both critical points. Such 'double-criticality' contributes to the system's ability to perform robustly in the presence of perturbations and suggests that geometric frustration may be functional.
Publisher URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01160
DOI: arXiv:1711.01160v2
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