Related papers: Disordered, stretched, and semiflexible biopolymer…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
We consider the passage of long polymers of length N through a hole in a membrane. If the process is slow, it is in principle possible to focus on the dynamics of the number of monomers s on one side of the membrane, assuming that the two…
Bidisperse particle systems are common in both natural and engineered materials, and it is known to influence packing, flow, and stability. However, their direct effect on elastic properties, particularly in systems with attractive…
We study the conformations of polymer chains in a poor solvent, with and without bending rigidity, by means of a simple statistical mechanics model. This model can be exactly solved for chains of length up to N=55 using exact enumeration…
Nanoscale polymeric thin films are widely used in diverse applications such as energy devices, flexible electronics and biosensors, where a satisfactory mechanical performance is of vital importance to realize their full functionality. It…
In this work I have studied the effect of disorder and system size in fiber bundle model with a certain range of stress redistribution. The strength of the bundle as well as the failure abruptness is observed with varying disorder, stress…
We consider an explicit model of a semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a gliding assay of motor proteins, which attach to and detach from filament segments stochastically, with a detachment rate that depends on the local load…
We study energy relaxation in a phenomenological model for polymer built from rheological considerations: a one dimensional nonlinear lattice with dissipative couplings. These couplings are well known in polymer's community to be possibly…
The constraints imposed by nano- and microscale confinement on the conformational degrees of freedom of thermally fluctuating biopolymers are utilized in contemporary nano-devices to specifically elongate and manipulate single chains. A…
The linear viscoelastic response of single semiflexible polymer chains in the infinite-dilution limit is studied using Brownian dynamics simulations of coarse-grained bead-spring chains. The springs obey the FENE-Fraenkel force law, a…
We study electronic transport properties of disordered polymers in the presence of both uncorrelated and short-range correlated impurities. In our procedure, the actual physical potential acting upon the electrons is replaced by a set of…
We present a unified scaling theory for the structural behavior of polymers embedded in a disordered energy substrate. An optimal polymer configuration is defined as the polymer configuration that minimizes the sum of interacting energies…
We perform equilibrium computer simulations of a two-dimensional pinned flexible polymer exposed to a quenched disorder potential consisting of hard disks. We are especially interested in the high-density regime of the disorder, where…
Recent advances in single macromolecule experiments have sparked interest in the ensemble dependence of force-extension relations. The thermodynamic limit may not be attainable for such systems, that leads to inequivalence of the…
Simple expressions for the bending and the base-stacking energy of double-stranded semiflexible biopolymers (such as DNA and actin) are derived. The distribution of the folding angle between the two strands is obtained by solving a…
The breakage of a polymer chain of segments, coupled by anharmonic bonds with applied constant external tensile force is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation. We show that the mean life time of the chain becomes progressively…
The reorientation dynamics of local tangent vectors of chains in isotropic amorphous melts containing semiflexible model polymers was studied by molecular dynamics simulations. The reorientation is strongly influenced both by the local…
Topological constraints can affect both equilibrium and dynamic properties of polymer systems, and can play a role in the organization of chromosomes. Despite many theoretical studies, the effects of topological constraints on the…
We propose a two-body spherically symmetric (isotropic) potential such that particles interacting by the potential self assemble into linear semiflexible polymeric chains without branching. By suitable control of the potential parameters we…
As a first step to understanding the role of molecular or chemical polydispersity in self-assembly, we put forward a coarse-grained model that describes the spontaneous formation of quasi-linear polymers in solutions containing two…