Relating stress fluctuations to rheology in model biopolymer networks.

Cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymers are one of the essential building blocks of life as they are the scaffolds providing mechanical strength to biological cells to handle external stress and regulate shape. These protein structures experience strain at different rates often under confinement such as a membrane. Here, we compute the steady-state dynamics of stress and stress fluctuations in a wall-confined, continuously sheared, reversibly cross-linked, sticker-spacer model of a semiflexible biopolymer network.