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Physical Sciences and Mathematics

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Theses/Dissertations

Microtubules

Publication Year
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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Coupled Oscillators: Protein And Acoustics, Angelique N. Mcfarlane Aug 2022

Coupled Oscillators: Protein And Acoustics, Angelique N. Mcfarlane

Theses

This work encompassed three different vibrational energy transfer studies of coupled resonators (metal, topological, and microtubule comparison) inspired by the lattices of microtubules from regular and cancerous cells. COMSOL Multiphysics 5.4 was utilized to design the experiment. The simulation starts with an acoustic pressure study to examine the vibrational modes present in coupled cylinders, representing α-, β-tubulin heterodimers. The Metal Study consisted of 3 models (monomer, dimer, and trimer) to choose the correct height (40 mm) and mode (Mode 1) for study. The Topological Study was run to predict and understand how the lattice structure changes over a parametric sweep …


Modeling Single Microtubules As A Colloidal System To Measure The Harmonic Interactions Between Tubulin Dimers In Bovine Brain Derived Versus Cancer Cell Derived Microtubules, Arooj Aslam May 2020

Modeling Single Microtubules As A Colloidal System To Measure The Harmonic Interactions Between Tubulin Dimers In Bovine Brain Derived Versus Cancer Cell Derived Microtubules, Arooj Aslam

Dissertations

The local properties of tubulin dimers dictate the properties of the larger microtubule assembly. In order to elucidate this connection, tubulin-tubulin interactions are be modeled as harmonic interactions to map the stiffness matrix along the length of the microtubule. The strength of the interactions are measured by imaging and tracking the movement of segments along the microtubule over time, and then performing a fourier transform to extract the natural vibrational frequencies. Using this method the first ever reported experimental phonon spectrum of the microtubule is reported. This method can also be applied to other biological materials, and opens new doors …