Related papers: Tightening the knot in phytochrome by single molec…
We investigate the effect of knot type on the properties of a ring polymer confined to a slit. For relatively wide slits, the more complex the knot, the more the force exerted by the polymer on the walls is decreased compared to an…
The backbone of most proteins forms an open curve. To study their entanglement, a common strategy consists in searching for the presence of knots in their backbones using topological invariants. However, this approach requires to close the…
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…
The presence of slipknots in configurations of proteins and DNA has been shown to affect their functionality, or alter it entirely. Historically, polymers are modeled as polygonal chains in space. As an alternative to space curves, we…
The denaturation of double-stranded DNA as function of force and temperature is discussed. At room temperature, sequence heterogeneity dominates the physics of single molecule force-extension curves starting about 7 piconewtons of below a…
The functions of RNA pseudoknots (PKs), which are minimal tertiary structural motifs and an integral part of several ribozymes and ribonucleoprotein complexes, are determined by their structure, stability and dynamics. Therefore, it is…
We study the compression and extension dynamics of a DNA-like polymer interacting with non-DNA binding and DNA-binding proteins, by means of computer simulations. The geometry we consider is inspired by recent experiments probing the…
In typical single-molecule force spectroscopy experiments the mechanical unfolding of molecular complexes or biomolecules is studied applying a force ramp to one end of the system while the other end is kept fixed in space. The…
Gel electrophoresis allows to separate knotted DNA (nicked circular) of equal length according to the knot type. At low electric fields, complex knots being more compact, drift faster than simpler knots. Recent experiments have shown that…
In this work the thermodynamic properties of short polymer knots (up to 120 segments) defined on a simple cubic lattice are studied with the help of the Wang-Landau Monte Carlo algorithm. The sampling process is performed using pivot…
Protein molecules often self-assemble by means of non-covalent physical bonds to form extended filaments, such as amyloids, F-actin, intermediate filaments, and many others. The kinetics of filament growth is limited by the disassembly…
We consider mechanical stability of dimeric and monomeric proteins with the cystine knot motif. A structure based dynamical model is used to demonstrate that all dimeric and some monomeric proteins of this kind should have considerable…
A theory of the unzipping of double-stranded (ds) DNA is presented, and is compared to recent micromanipulation experiments. It is shown that the interactions which stabilize the double helix and the elastic rigidity of single strands (ss)…
This work introduces a methodology for the statistical mechanical analysis of polymeric chains under tension controlled by optical or magnetic tweezers at thermal equilibrium with an embedding fluid medium. The response of single bonds…
It is crucial to measure position and conformational changes of a membrane-interacting protein relative to the membrane surface. This is however challenging because the thickness of a membrane is usually only about 4 nm. We developed a…
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…
RNA folding is a kinetic process governed by the competition of a large number of structures stabilized by the transient formation of base pairs that may induce complex folding pathways and the formation of misfolded structures. Despite of…
We present Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations of the stretching of a single 30 nm chromatin fiber. The model approximates the DNA by a flexible polymer chain with Debye-H\"uckel electrostatics and uses a two-angle zig-zag model for the geometry…
A summary of photo- and electrochemical surface modifications applied on single-crystalline chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond films is given. The covalently bonded formation of amine- and phenyl-linker molecule layers are…
Pseudo-heterodyne scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (sSNOM) is applied in the mid-infrared region to detect the chemical composition of biomolecules on the nanoscale. However, the application of sSNOM in molecular…