Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p>The cytoskeleton is a network of filamentous proteins, notably, actin filaments and microtubules. These filaments are active as their assembly is driven by the hydrolysis of nucleotides bound to the constituting protomers. In addition, the assembly kinetics differs at the two respective ends, making them active polar filaments. Experimental evidence suggests, that, in vivo, actin filaments and microtubules can grow at one and shrink at the other end at the same rate, a state that is known as treadmilling. In this work, we use a generic discrete two-state model for active polar filaments to analyze the conditions leading to treadmilling. We find that a single filament can self-organize into the treadmilling state for a broad range of monomer concentrations. In this regime the corresponding length distribution has a pronounced maximum at a finite value. We then extend our description to consider specifically the dynamics of actin filaments. We show that actin treadmilling should be observable in vitro in the presence of appropriate depolymerization promoting factors.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Interfacial interactions can play an important role in the glass transition temperature (Tg) and relaxation dynamics of ultra-thin glass polymer films. We have recently shown that similar to the polymeric systems in ultra-thin molecular glass films of N, N′-Bis(3-methylphenyl)-N, N′-diphenylbenzidine (TPD), the Tg is reduced and dynamics are enhanced. Furthermore, in molecular glass systems, as the film thickness is reduced below ∼30 nm, the dynamics at the two interfaces correlate such that the range of the gradients in the dynamics induced by the free surface narrows compared to thicker films. These observations indicate that the dynamics of the glassy thin films are strongly correlated and cannot be explained by a simple two-layer model consisting of a bulk and a thin interfacial layer with a constant thickness and constant range of dynamical gradients. Here, we investigate the effect of film/substrate interactions on the film dynamics by varying the TPD/substrate interfacial interactions. We show that thin TPD films with thicknesses below ∼60 nm show a smaller extent of Tg reduction and enhanced dynamics when supported on a near-neutral substrate (wetting) compared to a weakly interacting (dewetting) substrate. However, the ∼30 nm length scale, where the activation energy significantly reduces from its bulk value as measured by the onset of the glass transition remains unchanged. Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation also shows a narrowing in the range of relaxation times once the thickness is sufficiently reduced for the two interfaces to dynamically correlate, consistent with previous work. These results suggest that the length-scale for the correlated dynamics is independent of interfacial interactions and the polymeric nature of the film and may originate from the bulk glass properties.</jats:p>

<jats:p>We present a perturbation theory that combines the use of a third-order Barker–Henderson expansion of the Helmholtz energy with Mie-potentials that include first- (Mie-FH1) and second-order (Mie-FH2) Feynman–Hibbs quantum corrections. The resulting equation of state, the statistical associating fluid theory for Mie potentials of variable range corrected for quantum effects (SAFT-VRQ-Mie), is compared to molecular simulations and is seen to reproduce the thermodynamic properties of generic Mie-FH1 and Mie-FH2 fluids accurately. SAFT-VRQ Mie is exploited to obtain optimal parameters for the intermolecular potentials of neon, helium, deuterium, ortho-, para-, and normal-hydrogen for the Mie-FH1 and Mie-FH2 formulations. For helium, hydrogen, and deuterium, the use of either the first- or second-order corrections yields significantly higher accuracy in the representation of supercritical densities, heat capacities, and speed of sounds when compared to classical Mie fluids, although the Mie-FH2 is slightly more accurate than Mie-FH1 for supercritical properties. The Mie-FH1 potential is recommended for most of the fluids since it yields a more accurate representation of the pure-component phase equilibria and extrapolates better to low temperatures. Notwithstanding, for helium, where the quantum effects are largest, we find that none of the potentials give an accurate representation of the entire phase envelope, and its thermodynamic properties are represented accurately only at temperatures above 20 K. Overall, supercritical heat capacities are well represented, with some deviations from experiments seen in the liquid phase region for helium and hydrogen.</jats:p>

<jats:p>We perform coarse-grained simulations of model unentangled polymer materials to quantify the range over which interfaces alter the structure and dynamics in the vicinity of the interface. We study the interfacial zone around nanoparticles (NPs) in model polymer-NP composites with variable NP diameter, as well as the interfacial zone at the solid substrate and free surface of thin supported polymer films. These interfaces alter both the segmental packing and mobility in an interfacial zone. Variable NP size allows us to gain insight into the effect of boundary curvature, where the film is the limit of zero curvature. We find that the scale for perturbations of the density is relatively small and decreases on cooling for all cases. In other words, the interfaces become more sharply defined on cooling, as naively expected. In contrast, the interfacial mobility scale ξ for both NPs and supported films increases on cooling and is on the order of a few nanometers, regardless of the polymer-interfacial interaction strength. Additionally, the dynamical interfacial scale of the film substrate is consistent with a limiting value for polymer-NP composites as the NP size grows. These findings are based on a simple quantitative model to describe the distance dependence of relaxation that should be applicable to many interfacial polymer materials.</jats:p>

<jats:p>We extend the statistical associating fluid theory of quantum corrected Mie potentials (SAFT-VRQ Mie), previously developed for pure fluids [Aasen et al., J. Chem. Phys. 151, 064508 (2019)], to fluid mixtures. In this model, particles interact via Mie potentials with Feynman–Hibbs quantum corrections of first order (Mie-FH1) or second order (Mie-FH2). This is done using a third-order Barker–Henderson expansion of the Helmholtz energy from a non-additive hard-sphere reference system. We survey existing experimental measurements and ab initio calculations of thermodynamic properties of mixtures of neon, helium, deuterium, and hydrogen and use them to optimize the Mie-FH1 and Mie-FH2 force fields for binary interactions. Simulations employing the optimized force fields are shown to follow the experimental results closely over the entire phase envelopes. SAFT-VRQ Mie reproduces results from simulations employing these force fields, with the exception of near-critical states for mixtures containing helium. This breakdown is explained in terms of the extremely low dispersive energy of helium and the challenges inherent in current implementations of the Barker–Henderson expansion for mixtures. The interaction parameters of two cubic equations of state (Soave–Redlich–Kwong and Peng–Robinson) are also fitted to experiments and used as performance benchmarks. There are large gaps in the ranges and properties that have been experimentally measured for these systems, making the force fields presented especially useful.</jats:p>