Mechanical Behavior of Axonal Microtubules; the Effect of Fluid on the Rupture of Axonal Microtubules

Abstract

AbstractAxonal microtubules are dynamically instable bundles in the interior part of the axon. The dynamics of these bundles are of vital importance in the behavior of axon such as their degeneration. Each axon typically contains 10~100 microtubule bundles with average length of 4μm. These bundles are coated with cytoplasm and are cross linked with random number of tau proteins. In some circumstances such as acceleration or deceleration of head in space or during the strike, they are placed in tension which may cause rupture of these bundles or disconnection of tau protein cross links. Mechanical behavior and rupture modality of microtubule bundles are becoming more and more important recently. In our model, viscoelastic microtubule bundles constituted from several discrete masses connected to the neighboring mass with a standard linear solid (SLS), a spring damper model. In addition we take into account the effect of cytoplasm by Dissipative Particle Dynamic (DPD) to investigate the rupture nature and mechanical behavior of these bundles and the effect of cytoplasm on their mechanical behavior. We obtain these results for various amounts of suddenly applied end forces to the group of axonal microtubule bundles.