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We consider an elastic rod model for twisted DNA in the plectonemic regime. The molecule is treated as an impenetrable tube with an effective, adjustable radius. The model is solved analytically and we derive formulas for the contact…
Helical molecules change their twist number under the effect of a mechanical load. We study the twist-stretch relation for a set of short DNA molecules modeled by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian. Finite temperature path integral techniques are…
The structure and dynamics of a range of polystyrene sulphonate comb polyelectrolytes with well defined chain architectures were examined with static light scattering, dynamic light scattering, small angle neutron/X-ray scattering, particle…
The symmetries of the DNA double helix require a new term in its linear response to stress: the coupling between twist and stretch. Recent experiments with torsionally-constrained single molecules give the first direct measurement of this…
The stick-slip phenomenon widely exists in contact mechanics, from the macroscale to the nanoscale. During cholesteric-nematic unwinding by external fields, there is controversy regarding the role of planar surface anchoring, which may…
We model polydomain liquid-crystal elastomers by extending the neo-classical soft and semi-soft free energies used successfully to describe monodomain samples. We show that there is a significant difference between polydomains cross-linked…
Results of the idealized mode-coupling theory for the structural relaxation in suspensions of hard-sphere colloidal particles are presented and discussed with regard to recent light scattering experiments. The structural relaxation becomes…
We describe a simple meanfield variational approach to study a number of properties of intrinsically stiff chains which are appropriate models for a large class of biopolymers. We present the calculation of the distribution of end-to-end…
Freestanding tubular crystals offer a general description of crystalline order on deformable surfaces with cylindrical topology, such as single-walled carbon nanotubes, microtubules, and recently reported colloidal assemblies. These systems…
We use numerical simulations and an athermal quasi-static shear protocol to investigate the yielding of a model colloidal gel. Under increasing deformation, the elastic regime is followed by a significant stiffening before yielding takes…
We study the effect of rapid quench to zero temperature in a model with competing interactions, evolving through conserved spin dynamics. In a certain regime of model parameters, we find that the model belongs to the broader class of…
Compressive mechanical stress exceeding a critical value leads to the formation of periodic surface buckling patterns in film-substrate systems. A comprehensive understanding of this buckling phenomenon is desired in applications where the…
We present a phenomenological dynamical model able to describe the stretching features of the curve of DNA length vs applied force. As concerns the chain, the model is based on the discrete wormlike chain model with elastic modifications,…
For biologically relevant macromolecules such as intrinsically disordered proteins, internal degrees of freedom that allow for shape changes have a large influence on both the motion and function of the compound. A detailed understanding of…
Cells regulate gene expression in part by forming DNA-protein condensates in the nucleus. While existing theories describe the equilibrium size and stability of such condensates, their dynamics remain less understood. Here, we use…
We numerically and analytically analyze the startup continuous shear rheology of heavily entangled rigid rod polymer fluids based on our self-consistent, force-level theory of anharmonic tube confinement. The approach is simplified by…
We present a unified scaling description for the dynamics of monomers of a semiflexible chain under good solvent condition in the free draining limit. We consider both the cases where the contour length $L$ is comparable to the persistence…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
We study the elastic response of concentrated suspensions of rigid wire frame particles to a step strain. These particles are constructed from infinitely thin, rigid rods of length $L$. We specifically compare straight rod-like particles to…
We report a numerical investigation of the visco-elastic behavior in models for steric repulsive and short-range attractive colloidal suspensions, along different paths in the attraction-strength vs packing fraction plane. More…