Related papers: Condensation of circular DNA
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Motivated by results from an earlier Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulation for the collapse of a single, stiff polymer in a poor solvent [B. Schnurr, F. C. MacKintosh, and D. R. M. Williams, Europhys. Lett. 51 (3), 279 (2000)] we calculate the…
While stretching of most polymer chains leads to rather featureless force-extension diagrams, some, notably DNA, exhibit non-trivial behavior with a distinct plateau region. Here we propose a unified theory that connects force-extension…
Shape transformations in driven and damped molecular chains are considered. Closed chains of weakly coupled molecular subunits under the action of spatially homogeneous time-periodic external field are studied. The coupling between the…
We consider a lattice model of a semiflexible homopolymer chain in a bad solvent. Beside the temperature $T$, this model is described by (i) a curvature energy $\varepsilon_h$, representing the stiffness of the chain (ii) a…
Based on our previous paper [cond-mat/0507477], we establish a general model for the whip-toroid transitions of a semiflexible homopolymer chain using the path integral method and the O(3) nonlinear sigma model on a line segment with the…
The sequence-dependent elasticity of double-helical DNA on a nm length scale can be captured by the rigid base-pair model, whose strains are the relative position and orientation of adjacent base-pairs. Corresponding elastic potentials have…
We present a self-contained theory for the mechanical response of DNA in single molecule experiments. Our model is based on a 1D continuum description of the DNA molecule and accounts both for its elasticity and for DNA-DNA electrostatic…
We use computer simulations and scaling arguments to investigate statistical and structural properties of a semiflexible ribbon composed of isosceles triangles. We study two different models, one where the bending energy is calculated from…
We investigate morphologies of semiflexible polymer rings, such as circular DNA, which are adsorbed onto topographically or chemically structured substrate surfaces. We classify all equilibrium morphologies for two striped surface…
The approach for the description of the DNA conformational transformations on the mesoscopic scales in the frame of the double helix is presented. Due to consideration of the joint motions of DNA structural elements along the conformational…
The mechanical properties of molecules are today captured by single molecule manipulation experiments, so that polymer features are tested at a nanometric scale. Yet devising mathematical models to get further insight beyond the commonly…
The scaling behavior of a directed polymer in a two-dimensional (2D) random potential under confining force is investigated. The energy of a polymer with configuration $\{y(x)\}$ is given by $H\big(\{y(x)\}\big) = \sum_{x=1}^N \exyx +…
We develop a continuum elastic approach to examining the bending mechanics of semiflexible filaments with a local internal degree of freedom that couples to the bending modulus. We apply this model to study the nonlinear mechanics of a…
We consider three different continuum polymer models, that all depend on a tunable parameter r that determines the strength of the excluded-volume interactions. In the first model chains are obtained by concatenating hard spherocylinders of…
DNA is now firmly established as a versatile and robust platform for achieving synthetic nanostructures. While the folding of single molecules into complex structures is routinely achieved through engineering basepair sequences, much less…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of a torsionally constrained polymer. The polymer is modeled as a fluctuating rod with bend stiffness A kT and twist stiffness C kT. In such a model, thermal bend fluctuations couple geometrically to…
We develop further a statistical model coupling denaturation and chain conformations in DNA (Palmeri J, Manghi M and Destainville N 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 088103). Our Discrete Helical Wormlike Chain model takes explicitly into account…
The phase diagram of a water solution of DNA and oppositely charged spherical macroions is studied. DNA winds around spheres to form beads-on-a-string complexes resembling the chromatin 10 nm fiber. At small enough concentration of spheres…
A variational framework is developed to examine the equilibrium states of a semi-flexible polymer that is constrained to lie on a fixed surface. As an application the confinement of a closed polymer loop of fixed length $2\pi R$ within a…