title: Effective potential of longitudinal interactions between microtubule protofilaments.
abstract: An effective potential for longitudinal interactions between adjacent protofilaments in a microtubule is introduced. Our proposed interaction potential is a periodic and continuous function of the offset between two protofilaments, which also incorporates the bending energy of protofilaments. This potential produces the results of atomistic simulations. Further, using the potential, a Monte Carlo simulation gives results for the skew angles of observed structures that are in good agreement with experiments.
authors.affiliation: School of Nano, Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, PO Box 19395-5531, Tehran, Iran. neek@nano.ipm.ac.ir
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Neek-Amal
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hamedani Radja
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Ejtehadi