Related papers: Spontaneous Unknotting of a Polymer Confined in a …
We use molecular dynamics simulations to study a semidilute, unentangled polymer solution containing well dispersed, weakly attractive nanoparticles (NP) of size ($\sigma_N$) smaller than the polymer radius of gyration $R_g$. We find that…
Entangled knots form spontaneously in flexible filaments, yet the influence of the surrounding environment on this process is poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that free-moving particles act as kinetic catalysts for spontaneous…
The conformational properties of flexible and semiflexible polymers exposed to active noise are studied theoretically. The noise may originate from the interaction of the polymer with surround- ing active (Brownian) particles or from the…
Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…
We analyze static properties of a strongly confined semiflexible polymer, i.e. either trapped in a closed space or compressed by external forces, in an athermal solvent. Like a flexible polymer case, we can resort to an analogy with the…
We consider the diffusive motion of a localized knot along a linear polymer chain. In particular, we derive the mean diffusion time of the knot before it escapes from the chain once it gets close to one of the chain ends. Self-reptation of…
We investigate conformations and dynamics of a polymer considering its monomers to be active Brownian particles. This active polymer shows very intriguing physical behavior which is absent in an active Rouse chain. The chain initially…
Macromolecules can gain special properties by adopting knotted conformations, but engineering knotted macromolecules is a challenging task. Here we surprisingly observed that knotting can be very effectively produced in active polymers.…
We study how confinement affects topology and conformations in polymer films of varying thickness $h$. The knotting probability exhibits a maximum at intermediate thicknesses near the bulk radius of gyration $h \approx R_\mathrm{g,bulk}$,…
We study the rotational dynamics of a flexible polymer initially wrapped around a rigid rod and unwinding from it. This dynamics is of interest in several problems in biology and constitutes a fundamental instance of polymer relaxation from…
The advent of solid state nanodevices allows for interrogating the physico-chemical properties of a polyelectrolyte chain by electrophoretically driving it through a nanopore. Salient dynamical aspects of the translocation process have been…
Motivated by recent advances in single molecule manipulation techniques that enabled several groups to tie knots in individual polymer strands and to monitor their dynamics, we have used computer simulations to study "friction knots"…
The effect of a finite torque on semiflexible polymers in a confined environment is investigated. It is shown how a new lengthscale appears in the strongly confined limit. The influence of a torque on the extension of biopolymers in…
We study the influence of chain stiffness on droplet flow in a nano-channel, coated with semiflexible hydrophobic polymers by means of non-equilibrium molecular-dynamics simulations. The studied system is then a moving droplet in the slit…
We study theoretically the entropic elasticity of a semi-flexible polymer, such as DNA, confined to two dimensions. Using the worm-like-chain model we obtain an exact analytical expression for the partition function of the polymer pulled at…
We show that the problem of describing the conformations of a semiflexible polymer confined to a channel can be mapped onto an exactly solvable model in the so-called extended de Gennes regime. This regime (where the polymer is neither…
The interplay of topological constraints and Coulomb interactions in static and dynamic properties of charged polymers is investigated by numerical simulations and scaling arguments. In the absence of screening, the long-range interaction…
We revisit a model of semiflexible Gaussian chains proposed by Winkler \textit{et al}, solve the dynamics of the discrete description of the model and derive exact algebraic expressions for some of the most relevant dynamical observables,…
We construct a tractable model to describe the rate at which a knotted polymer is ejected from a spherical capsid via a small pore. Knots are too large to fit through the pore and must reptate to the end of the polymer for ejection to…
We present Monte Carlo computer simulations for melts of semiflexible randomly knotted and randomly concatenated ring polymers on the fcc lattice and in slit confinement. Through systematic variation of the slit width at fixed melt density,…