Figure 5. Minimal physical model of isotropic actomyosin captures telescopic contractile dynamics.

(a) Active viscoelastic gel model of a central contractile core (with stress σ_a) and surrounded by a non-contractile medium (with Young's modulus E and viscosity η). Heatmap represents magnitude of the flow velocity and arrows indicate direction of flow. (b) Spatial profile of radial velocity and (c) radial stress at different times. (d) Maximum velocity, (e) maximum strain rate and (f) the maximum strain as a function of the radius of the activation zone in a for various values of the parameter E/σ_a. See Supplementary Table 1 for a list of model parameters. (g) F-actin with 45 nM Filamin-A (R_C=[Filamin]/[Actin]=0.035). Red vectors indicate boundary velocity. Scale bar, 25 μm. Strain (h) and Strain rate (i) of un-crosslinked and filamin-crosslinked actomyosin. Error bars are s.d. ^****P<0.0001 by a Student's t-test.