A Method for Identification of the Constitutive Law of Biological Filaments From Their Dynamic Equilibria
There are several biological filaments that play vital role in cellular processes via twisting and bending deformations. From the double-stranded DNA molecule containing genetic information to the cytoskeletal fibers that provide shape to the cell, biological filaments undergo conformational changes as they perform their biological tasks. Therefore the ability of a filament to deform, which depends on their atomistic structure, is a characteristic property that governs its biological functions. Since there is no direct analytic method to derive the deformability or constitutive law of such filaments from their atomistic structure, the constitutive law has to be identified from their actual deformations. An inverse approach based on a continuum rod model was developed recently that uses deformations in static equilibrium to estimate the constitutive law in bending and torsion. We extend the inverse method to use dynamic states of deformations, and consequently expand its scope to leverage a wide variety of choices in molecular dynamics simulations for identifying the constitutive law. This paper presents and validates the technique applying it to filaments with artificial atomistic structure.