Related papers: Equilibrium morphologies and force extension behav…
Experiments using nanofluidic devices have proven effective in characterizing the physical properties of polymers confined to small cavities. Two recent studies using such methods examined the organization and dynamics of two DNA molecules…
We present an extremely simplified model of multiple-domains polymer stretching in an atomic force microscopy experiment. We portray each module as a binary set of contacts and decompose the system energy into a harmonic term (the…
By means of continuous space Monte Carlo simulation we study conformational structures formed by star and comb heteropolymers during kinetics of folding from the coil to the globule, as well as the corresponding equilibrium states on going…
We investigate the stretching response of a thick polymer model by means of extensive stochastic simulations. The computational results are synthesized in an analytic expression that characterizes how the force versus elongation curve…
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…
Conformational transitions of flexible molecules, especially those driven by hydrophobic effects, tend to be hindered by desolvation barriers. For such transitions, it is thus important to characterize and understand the interplay between…
High molecular weight polymer solutions have a powerful tendency to deposit adsorbed layers when exposed to even mildly attractive surfaces. The equilibrium properties of these dense interfacial layers have been extensively studied…
We present a systematic statistical mechanical analysis of the conformational properties of a stiff polyelectrolyte chain with intrachain attractions that are due to counterion correlations. We show that the mean-field solution corresponds…
We study the static properties of a semiflexible polymer exposed to a quenched random environment by means of computer simulations. The polymer is modeled as two-dimensional Heisenberg chain. For the random environment we consider hard…
The folding transition of single, long semiflexible polymers was studied with special emphasis on the chain length effect using Monte Carlo simulations. While a relatively short chain (10-25 Kuhn segments) undergoes a large discrete…
We present a quantitative picture of the separation of star polymers in a solution where part of the volume is influenced by a porous medium. To this end, we study the impact of long-range-correlated quenched disorder on the entropy and…
The shape of a polymer plays an important role in determining its interactions with other molecules and with the environment, and is in turn affected by both of them. As a consequence, in the literature the shape properties of a chain in…
We present an analytical theory for heteropolymer deformation, as exemplified experimentally by stretching of single protein molecules. Using a mean-field replica theory, we determine phase diagrams for stress-induced unfolding of typical…
We study the effects of intrinsic sequence-dependent curvature for a two dimensional semiflexible biopolymer with short-range correlation in intrinsic curvatures. We show exactly that when not subjected to any external force, such a system…
We provide a unified theory for the high force elasticity of biopolymers solely in terms of the persistence length, $\xi_p$, and the monomer spacing, $a$. When the force $f>\fh \sim k_BT\xi_p/a^2$ the biopolymers behave as Freely Jointed…
The structural properties of a linear polymer and its evolution in time have a strong bearing on its anisotropic stress response. The mean-square bond length and mean bond angle are the critical parameters that influence the time-varying…
Synthetic copolymers and biopolymers, such as polypeptides and double-stranded DNA, often exhibit strong variations in bending stiffness along their contour, which can significantly impact conformational behavior at larger scales. To…
Semiflexible polymers in poor solvents exhibit a rich variety of collapsed morphologies, including globules, toroids, and rodlike bundles, arising from the competition between attractive interactions and chain stiffness. Computer…
The influence of monomer-monomer interactions on the scaling exponents and shape characteristics of a single polymer chain in a selective solvent is investigated using Langevin dynamics simulations. By systematically increasing the…
Solutions of semiflexible polymers confined by repulsive planar walls are studied by density functional theory and Molecular Dynamics simulations, to clarify the competition between the chain alignment favored by the wall and the depletion…