Coupled oscillators: protein and acoustics

Author

Angelique N. McFarlane, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

8-30-2022

Degree Name

Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering - (M.S.)

Department

Physics

First Advisor

Camelia Prodan

Second Advisor

Ken Keunhyuk Ahn

Third Advisor

Farnaz A .Shakib

Abstract

This work encompassed three different vibrational energy transfer studies of coupled resonators (metal, topological, and microtubule comparison) inspired by the lattices of microtubules from regular and cancerous cells. COMSOL Multiphysics 5.4 was utilized to design the experiment. The simulation starts with an acoustic pressure study to examine the vibrational modes present in coupled cylinders, representing α-, β-tubulin heterodimers. The Metal Study consisted of 3 models (monomer, dimer, and trimer) to choose the correct height (40 mm) and mode (Mode 1) for study. The Topological Study was run to predict and understand how the lattice structure changes over a parametric sweep (Qian et al. [7]). This study includes a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Model for prediction, then a Model inspired by the microtubule protofilament. Finally, a new proposed method is given to simulate a microtubule. Study 3 has 2 models, both with a two-dimensional lattice, but the second with two distinct domains to emulate the 80 % - 20 % healthy/cancerous regions within a cancerous microtubule. The spectrums from each model is inspired by the microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) bound to the tubulin dimers, in Region 1, then unbinding in Region 2. The Cancerous Model shows less energy held within the lattice as compared to the Microtubule Model. Future work could involve changing the coupling strengths and distances to conform to schematics from Mart´inez et al. [5] and Deniz et al. [4].

Recommended Citation

McFarlane, Angelique N., "Coupled oscillators: protein and acoustics" (2022). Theses. 2022.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/2022