Metastable tight knots in a worm-like polymer
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
Based on an estimate of the knot entropy of a worm-like chain we predict that the interplay of bending energy and confinement entropy will result in a compact metastable configuration of the knot that will diffuse, without spreading, along the contour of the semi-flexible polymer until it reaches one of the chain ends. Our estimate of the size of the knot as a function of its topological invariant (ideal aspect ratio) agrees with recent experimental results of knotted dsDNA. Further experimental tests of our ideas are proposed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0702160,
title = {Metastable tight knots in a worm-like polymer},
author = {Alexander Y. Grosberg and Yitzhak Rabin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0702160},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures