Related papers: Encounter dynamics of a small target by a polymer …
Chain-like macromolecules in solution, whether biological or synthetic, transform from an extended conformation to a compact one when temperature or other system parameters change. This collapse transition is relevant in various phenomena,…
The first-passage time (FPT), defined as the time a random walker takes to reach a target point in a confining domain, is a key quantity in the theory of stochastic processes. Its importance comes from its crucial role to quantify the…
We consider a model for a polymer chain interacting with a sequence of equispaced flat interfaces through a pinning potential. The intensity $\delta \in \mathbb {R}$ of the pinning interaction is constant, while the interface spacing…
Recent studies have established a connection between the macroscopic mechanical response of polymeric materials and the statistics of the shortest path (SP) length between distant nodes in the polymer network. Since these statistics can be…
The diffusion of molecules (penetrants) of variable size, shape, and chemistry through dense crosslinked polymer networks is a fundamental scientific problem that is broadly relevant in materials, polymer, physical and biological chemistry.…
We use computer simulations to study the (driven) dynamics of a charged polymer in a disordered medium, thus mimicking the setting used in gel electrophoresis. In agreement with experiments, we find that inside the gel the mobility of the…
We study the search process of a target on a rapidly folding polymer (`DNA') by an ensemble of particles (`proteins'), whose search combines 1D diffusion along the chain, Levy type diffusion mediated by chain looping, and volume exchange. A…
A one-dimensional run-and-tumble particle (RTP) switches randomly between a left and right moving state of constant speed $v$. This type of motion arises in a wide range of applications in cell biology, including the unbiased growth and…
Finding a target in a complex environment is a fundamental challenge in nature, from chemical reactions to sperm reaching an egg. An effective strategy to reduce the time needed to reach a target is to deploy many searchers, increasing the…
Nanocomposite films containing a high volume fraction (> 50vol%) of nanoparticles (NPs) in a polymer matrix are promising for their functionality and use as structural coatings, and also provide a unique platform to understand polymer…
The first passage time (FPT) for random walks is a key indicator of how fast information diffuses in a given system. Despite the role of FPT as a fundamental feature in transport phenomena, its behavior, particularly in heterogeneous…
We formulate a dynamical model for microtubules interacting with a catastrophe-inducing boundary. In this model microtubules are either waiting to be nucleated, actively growing or shrinking, or stalled at the boundary. We first determine…
The adhesion between a polymer melt and substrate is studied in the presence of chemically attached chains on the substrate surface. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out to study the effect of temperature, tethered…
Polymers confined to a narrow channel are subject to strong entropic forces that tend to drive the molecules apart. In this study, we use Monte Carlo computer simulations to study the segregation behavior of two flexible hard-sphere…
Encounter-based models of diffusion provide a probabilistic framework for analyzing the effects of a partially absorbing reactive surface, in which the probability of absorption depends upon the amount of surface-particle contact time.…
Entropic repulsion between DNA ring polymers under confinement is the key mechanism governing the spatial segregation of bacterial chromosomes, although it remains incompletely understood how proteins aid the process of entropic…
We consider the kinetics of first contact between two monomers of the same macromolecule. Relying on a fractal description of the macromolecule, we develop an analytical method to compute the Mean First Contact Time (MFCT) for various…
In this work we study the noise induced effects on the dynamics of short polymers crossing a potential barrier, in the presence of a metastable state. An improved version of the Rouse model for a flexible polymer has been adopted to mimic…
We use a lattice model to study first-passage time distributions of target finding events through complex environments with elongated fibers distributed with different anisotropies and volume occupation fractions. For isotropic systems and…
The force-assisted desorption kinetics of a macromolecule from adhesive surface is studied theoretically, using the notion of tensile (Pincus) blobs, as well as by means of Monte-Carlo (MC) and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. We show…