Related papers: Knot-controlled ejection of a polymer from a virus…
Reptation governs motion of long polymers through a confining environment. Slack enters at the ends and diffuses along the polymer as stored length. The rate at which stored length diffuses limits the speed at which the chain can drift.…
Simulations in which a globular ring polymer with delocalized knots is separated in two interacting loops by a slipping link, or in two non-interacting globuli by a wall with a hole, show how the minimal crossing number of the knots…
Solid-state nanopore DNA sequencers present mechanical and chemical stability, reusability, and large-scale integrability. However, their development is hindered by the absence of a protein-free mechanism for controlling DNA translocation,…
We use lattice-Boltzmann molecular dynamics (LBMD) simulations to study the compression of a confined polymer immersed in a fluid and pushed by a large spherical colloid with a diameter comparable to the channel width. We examined the…
Many theoretical works have attempted to coarse grain gene expression at the level of transcription and translation via frameworks based on exclusion processes. Usually in these models the three-dimensional conformation of the substrates…
Scaling arguments are used to analyze the size of topologically constrained closed ring polymer with excluded volume. It is found that there exists a finite range of polymer thickness (excluded volume) in which self-avoidance is unimportant…
The Knot Entropy Conjecture states that the exponential growth rate of the number of $n$-edge lattice polygons with knot-type $K$ is the same as that for unknot polygons. Moreover, the next order growth follows a power law in $n$ with an…
A ring polymer in a confining space may exhibit at least two phases, namely an expanded (or solvent-rich phase) if its concentration is small, or a collapsed (or polymer-rich phase) when it is concentrated and compressed. These phases are…
A theory is presented for the binding of small molecules such as surfactants to semiflexible polymers. The persistence length is assumed to be large compared to the monomer size but much smaller than the total chain length. Such polymers…
A lattice model of RNA denaturation which fully accounts for the excluded volume effects among nucleotides is proposed. A numerical study shows that interactions forming pseudoknots must be included in order to get a sharp continuous…
Long-lived excited states of atomic nuclei can act as energy traps. These states, known as nuclear isomers, can store a large amount of energy over long periods of time, with a very high energy-to-mass ratio. Under natural conditions, the…
In living organisms, proteins and peptides are often under the influence of mechanical forces, especially in confined spaces such as membrane channels, ribosome exit tunnel, or proteasome gate. Due to the directional nature of proteins as…
We study the effect of physical confinement on the capillary infiltration of polymers into cylindrical nanopores using molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, we probe whether the critical contact angle above which capillary rise…
Nano-scale confinement of polymer in cone-shaped geometries occurs in many experimental situations. A flexible polymer confined in a cone-shaped nano-channel is studied theoretically and using molecular dynamics simulations. Distribution of…
We present a theoretical description of the dynamics of a semi-flexible polymer being pulled through a nanopore by an external force acting at the pore. Our theory is based on the tensile blob picture of Pincus in which the front of the…
Confinement is a versatile and well-established tool to study the properties of polymers either to understand biological processes or to develop new nano-biomaterials. We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer ring in weak…
Using the framework of generalized exclusion processes we study mixtures of passive and active particles interacting by steric repulsion. The particles move in a pore with periodically modulated aperture, which is modeled by a…
A growing number of proteins have been shown to adopt knotted folds. Yet the biological roles and biophysical properties of these knots remain poorly understood. We have used protein engineering and atomic force microscopy to explore…
Spherical confinement can act either stabilizing or destabilizing on the collapsed state of a semi-flexible polymer. General free-energy arguments suggest that the order of the unconstrained collapse transition is the distinguishing factor:…
We study the elastic properties and mechanical stability of viral capsids under external force-loading with computer simulations. Our approach allows the implementation of specific geometries corresponding to specific phages such as…