Mechano-electrical Oscillations of Supramolecular Networks

Under physiological conditions, supramolecular biological structures undergo nanoscale mechanical vibrations. Since proteins, which form building units of these structures, are usually highly electrically polar, mechanical oscillations will be accompanied by oscillating electric field. However, molecular modeling methods are not yet able to perform all-atom mechanical simulation of larger structures, nor its electric field. A number of simplifications must be done in order to accomplish such a simulation. In this contribution we present a model of mechano-electrical oscillations of microtubule and microtubular network. We represented subunits of microtubule the tubulin heterodimer by two charged particles forming an elementary electric dipole. Mechanical oscillations for given vibration modes are then implemented as a spatial function modulating the distance between particles, and modulating thus the dipole moment of subunits as well. Field around oscillating microtubule was then calculated as a vector superposition of contribution from all subunits. This method gives realistic results in reasonable time and computational intensity.