Physics-Based Computational Approaches to Compute the Viscoelasticity of Semiflexible Filamentous Biomaterials

Abstract

This mini-review highlights recent advances on computational approaches that have been used in the characterisation of the viscoelastic response of semiflexible filamentous biomaterials. Special attention is given to the multiscale and coarse-grained approaches that might be used to model the mechanical properties of systems which involve biopolymer assemblies, for instance, actin, collagen, vimentin, microtubules, DNA, viruses, silk, amyloid fibrils, and other protein-based filaments. Besides the basic features of the most commonly used models for semiflexible filaments, I present a brief overview of the numerical approaches that can be used to extract the viscoelasticity of dilute and concentrated solutions, as well as systems with cross-linked networks. Selected examples of simulations that attempt to retrieve the complex shear moduli at experimentally relevant time and length scales, i.e., including not only the fully formed filaments and networks but also their self-assembly kinetics, are also considered.