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Updated: Jun 24, 2026

The Mechanics of (Poro-)Elastic Contractile Actomyosin Networks As a Model System of the Cell Cytoskeleton
Published on: March 10, 2023
Allosteric transitions in biological nanomachines are described by robust normal modes of elastic networks
Wenjun Zheng1, Bernard R Brooks, D Thirumalai
1Physics Department, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. wjzheng@buffalo.edu
Abstract:
Allostery forms the basis of intra-molecular communications in various enzymes, however the underlying conformational changes are largely elusive. Recently, we have proposed to employ an elastic model based normal mode analysis to investigate the allosteric transitions in several molecular nanomachines (including myosin II, DNA polymerase and chaperonin GroEL). After combining with bioinformatics analysis of the evolutionary sequence variations, we have been able to identify the highly conserved and robust modes of collective motions that are capable of transmitting molecular signals over long distances.
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