English

Depletion effects and loop formation in self-avoiding polymers

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-11 v1

Abstract

Langevin dynamics is employed to study the looping kinetics of self-avoiding polymers both in ideal and crowded solutions. A rich kinetics results from the competition of two crowding-induced effects: the depletion attraction and the enhanced viscous friction. For short chains, the enhanced friction slows down looping, while, for longer chains, the depletion attraction renders it more frequent and persistent. We discuss the possible relevance of the findings for chromatin looping in living cells.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0610219,
  title  = {Depletion effects and loop formation in self-avoiding polymers},
  author = {N. M. Toan and D. Marenduzzo and P. R. Cook and C. Micheletti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0610219},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures