English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

The ability of biomolecules to exert forces on their surroundings or resistcompression from the environment is essential in a variety of biologicallyrelevant contexts. As has been understood for centuries, slender rods can onlybe compressed so far until they buckle, adopting an intrinsically bent statethat may be unable to bear a compressive load. In the low-temperature limit andfor a constant compressive force, Euler buckling theory predicts a suddentransition from a compressed to a bent state in these slender rods. In thispaper, we use a mean-field theory to show that if a semiflexible chain iscompressed at a finite temperature with a fixed end-to-end distance (permittingfluctuations in the compressive forces), it exhibits a continuous phasetransition to a buckled state at a critical level of compression, and wedetermine a quantitatively accurate prediction of the transverse positiondistribution function of the midpoint of the chain that indicates thetransition. We find the mean compressive forces are non-monotonic as theextension of the filament varies, consistent with the observation that stronglybuckled filaments are less able to bear an external load. We also find that forthe fixed extension (isometric) ensemble that the buckling transition does notcoincide with the local minimum of the mean force (in contrast to Eulerbuckling). We also show the theory is highly sensitive to fluctuations inlength, and that the buckling transition can still be accurately recovered byaccounting for those fluctuations. These predictions may be useful inunderstanding the behavior of filamentous biomolecules compressed byfluctuating forces, relevant in a variety of biological contexts.

Compression-induced continuous phase transition in the buckling of a semiflexible filament for two and three dimensions