Related papers: Encounter dynamics of a small target by a polymer …
Using a novel theoretical approach, we study the mean first encounter time (MFET) between the two ends of a polymer. Previous approaches used various simplifications that reduced the complexity of the problem, leading, however to…
How much time does it take for a fluctuating system, such as a polymer chain, to reach a target configuration that is rarely visited -- typically because of a high energy cost ? This question generally amounts to the determination of the…
The time for a DNA sequence to find its homologous depends on a long random search process inside the cell nucleus. Using polymer models, we model and compute here the mean first encounter time (MFET) between two sites located on two…
In this chapter, we review our recent work on first passage time (FPT) problems for absorption by a target whose interface is semipermeable. For pedagogical reasons, we focus on a single Brownian particle searching for a single target in a…
The mean first passage time (MFPT) for a Brownian particle to reach a small target in cellular microdomains is a key parameter for chemical activation. Although asymptotic estimations of the MFPT are available for various geometries, these…
This paper considers a broadly biologically relevant question of a chain (such as a protein) binding to a sequence of receptors with matching multiple ligands distributed along the chain. This binding is critical in cell adhesion events,…
Using Brownian Dynamics, we study the dynamical behavior of a polymer grafted onto an adhesive surface close to the mechanically induced adsorption-stretching transition. Even though the transition is first order, (in the infinite chain…
In this paper, we investigate a stochastic model describing the time evolution of a polymerization process. A polymer is a macro-molecule resulting from the aggregation of several elementary sub-units called monomers. Polymers can grow by…
Cellular networks are often composed of thin tubules connecting much larger node compartments. These structures serve for active or diffusion transport of proteins. Examples are glial networks in the brain, the endoplasmic reticulum in…
The narrow escape problem is a first-passage problem concerned with randomly moving particles in a physical domain, being trapped by absorbing surface traps (windows), such that the measure of traps is small compared to the domain size. The…
Motivated by recent single molecule studies of proteins sliding on a DNA molecule, we explore the targeting dynamics of N particles ("proteins") sliding diffusively along a line ("DNA") in search of their target site (specific target…
How long does it take a random walker to reach a given target point? This quantity, known as a first passage time (FPT), has led to a growing number of theoretical investigations over the last decade1. The importance of FPTs originates from…
Starting from the reported experimental evidence that the residence time of contacts between the ends of biopolymers is length dependent, we investigate the kinetics of contact breaking in simple polymer models from a theoretical point of…
In the scenario of the narrow escape problem (NEP) a particle diffuses in a finite container and eventually leaves it through a small "escape window" in the otherwise impermeable boundary, once it arrives to this window and over-passes an…
The dynamics of polymer-nanoparticle (NP) mixtures, which involves multiple scales and system-specific variables, has posed a long-standing challenge on its theoretical description. In this paper, we construct a microscopic theory for…
We propose an approach for estimating the probability that a given small target, among many, will be the first to be reached in a molecular dynamics simulation. Reaching small targets out of a vast number of possible configurations…
We derive an approximate formula for the mean first-passage time (MFPT) to a small absorbing target of arbitrary shape inside an elongated domain of a slowly varying axisymmetric profile. For this purpose, the original Poisson equation in…
We study the diffusion of a linear polymer in the presence of permeable membranes without excluded volume interactions, using scaling theory and Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the average time it takes for a chain with polymerization…
This study deals with polymer looping, an important process in many chemical and biological systems. We investigate basic questions on the looping dynamics of a polymer under tension using the freely-jointed chain (FJC) model. Previous…
We investigate the translocation dynamics of a folded linear polymer which is pulled through a nanopore by an external force. To this end, we generalize the iso-flux tension propagation (IFTP) theory for end-pulled polymer translocation to…