Nanorheology of viscoelastic shells: Applications to viral capsids

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze the microrheology of viscoelastic shells like viral capsids, providing analytical tools to interpret experimental measurements of their mechanical and thermal properties.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical model for the mechanical response and thermal fluctuations of permeable viscoelastic spherical shells, linking microscopic properties to measurable responses.

Findings

Derived damped dynamics of shell modes coupled to solvent

Identified fundamental length and time scales in shell dynamics

Proposed AFM-based experiments to measure viscoelasticity

Abstract

We study the microrheology of nanoparticle shells [Dinsmore et al. Science 298, 1006 (2002)] and viral capsids [Ivanovska et al. PNAS 101, 7600 (2004)] by computing the mechanical response function and thermal fluctuation spectrum of a viscoelastic spherical shell that is permeable to the surrounding solvent. We determine analytically the damped dynamics of the shear, bend, and compression modes of the shell coupled to the solvent both inside and outside the sphere in the zero Reynolds number limit. We identify fundamental length and time scales in the system, and compute the thermal correlation function of displacements of antipodal points on the sphere and the mechanical response to pinching forces applied at these points. We describe how such a frequency-dependent antipodal correlation and/or response function, which should be measurable in new AFM-based microrheology experiments, can probe the viscoelasticity of these synthetic and biological shells constructed of nanoparticles.