Figure 3. Nups modelled as interacting polymers in a cylindrical geometry.
a-b, Left column: Density cross sections for interacting polymers (see text) in a nanopore configuration that approximately mimics the NPC channel geometry29 (with AFM tip in black). Results are shown for interpolymer bead-bead pair attractions with decay length 1 nm and strengths of 0.02 and 0.05 kBT for a and b, respectively24. Centre and right columns: Side and top views of the approximate polymer configurations corresponding to the calculated polymer density profiles. c-d, Calculated force and stiffness curves for a supersharp AFM tip indenting the polymer assemblies as displayed in a (blue curve) and b (black curve), compared to the experimental curves averaged from control data (red, “Exp”, n = 107 NPCs). z = 0 refers to the contact point in the experimental data; the z offset of the theoretical data was adjusted to achieve the best match to the experimental data.