Related papers: Chain stiffness bridges conventional polymer and b…
Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…
Many variants of RNA, DNA, and even proteins can be considered semiflexible polymers, where bending stiffness, as a type of energetic penalty, competes with attractive van der Waals forces in structure formation processes. Here, we…
Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…
We analyse the nature of the confinement of an infinitely long (and finite) linear semiflexible homo-polymer chain confined in between two geometrical constraints (A&B) under good solvent condition in two dimensions. The constraints are…
We make use of the previously developed formalism for a monomer ensemble and include angular dependence of the segments of the polymer chains thus described. In particular we show how to deal with stiffness when the polymer chain is…
We use Wang-Landau and replica exchange techniques to study the effect of an increasing stiffness on the formation of secondary structures in protein-like systems. Two possible models are considered. In both models, a polymer chain is…
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…
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 paper develops the stiffness relationship between the movements and forces among a system of discrete interacting grains. The approach is similar to that used in structural analysis, but the stiffness matrix of granular material is…
Active polymers possess numerous unique properties that are quite different from those observed in the system of small active molecule due to the intricate interplay between their activity and topological constraints. This study focuses on…
A formula is derived for stiffness of a polymer chain in terms of the distribution function of end-to-end vectors. This relationship is applied to calculate the stiffness of Gaussian chains (neutral and carrying electric charges at the…
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…
We present the results of analytic calculations and numerical simulations of the behaviour of a new class of chain molecules which we call thick polymers. The concept of the thickness of such a polymer, viewed as a tube, is encapsulated by…
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,…
Polymeric single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) are soft nano-objects synthesized by purely intramolecular cross-linking of single polymer chains. By means of computer simulations, we investigate the conformational properties of SCNPs as a…
We have studied the thermodynamics of isolated homopolymer chains of varying stiffness using a lattice model. A complex phase behaviour is found; phases include chain-folded `crystalline' structures, the disordered globule and the coil. It…
We constrast the dynamics in model unentangled polymer melts of chains of three different stiffnesses: flexible, intermediate, and rodlike. Flexible and rodlike chains, which readily solidify into close-packed crystals (respectively with…
Chain molecules play a key role in the polymer field and in living cells. Our focus is on a new homopolymer model of a linear chain molecule subject to an attractive self-interaction promoting compactness. We analyze the model using simple…
Using a combination of the replica-exchange Monte Carlo algorithm and the multicanonical method, we investigate the influence of bending stiffness on the conformational phases of a bead-stick homopolymer model and present the pseudo-phase…
Using Langevin dynamics complemented by Wang-Landau Monte Carlo simulations, we study the phase behavior of single and multiple semiflexible polymer chains in solution under poor-solvent conditions. In the case of a single chain, we obtain…