A twist in chiral interaction between biological helices
Biological Physics
2009-10-31 v1 q-bio
Abstract
Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ~((RH)^1/2)/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the closest distance between their axes, and H is the helical pitch. Estimates based on this formula suggest a solution for the puzzle of small interaxial angles in a-helix bundles and in cholesteric phases of DNA.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/9911063,
title = {A twist in chiral interaction between biological helices},
author = {A. A. Kornyshev and S. Leikin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/9911063},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
7 pages, 2 figures, PDF file only