Exploring the Mechanical Behavior of Single Intermediate Filaments

Intermediate filaments (IFs) are structural elements of eukaryotic cells with distinct mechanical properties. Tissue integrity is severely impaired, in particular in skin and muscle, when IFs are either absent or malfunctioning due to mutations. Our knowledge on the mechanical properties of IFs is mainly based on tensile testing of macroscopic fibers and on the rheology of IF networks. At the single filament level, the only piece of data available is a measure of the persistence length of vimentin IFs.