Nematic textures in F-actin

Actin filaments, which are protein polymers occurring abundantly and ubiquitously in muscle and nonmuscle cells, are known to align in a shear flow, and with an external magnetic field. They form a nematic liquid crystal of the athermal type at a low concentration. Typical defects and textures of the nematic actin liquid crystal are described in this work. The generation of well-aligned nematic single crystals has been reported, in the vicinity of an air–water interface, with the actin filaments spontaneously aligning normal to the interface. Away from the air-water interface nematic single crystal domains are due to the alignment of the actin filaments parallel to the glass surface. The twist-bend nature of the disclination line of integral strength (m=1) has been attributed to the relative magnitudes of the anisotropic curvature elastic constants, which reflect the filaments’ semirigidity.