Related papers: The effect of configurational complexity in hetero…
We explore the coupling between the helix-coil and coil-globule transitions of a helical polymer using Monte Carlo simulations. A very rich state diagram is found. Each state is characterized by a specific configuration of the chain which…
Polymers adopt extended coil and compact globule states according to the balance between entropy and interaction energies. The transition of a polymer between an extended coil state and compact globule state can be induced by changing…
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…
The phase behaviour of a single large semiflexible polymer immersed in a suspension of spherical particles is studied. All interactions are simple excluded volume interactions and the diameter of the spherical particles is an order of…
A simple model of a polymer with long rigid segments which interact via excluded volume repulsions and short ranged attractions is proposed. The coil-globule transition of this model polymer is strongly first order, the globule is…
The thermodynamic behavior of collapse transition in a fully flexible coarse-grained model of energy polydisperse polymer (EPP), a statistical model of random heteropolymer, is investigated in an implicit solvent by means of molecular…
Homopolymer chain with beads forming pairwise reversible bonds is a well-known model in polymer physics. We studied kinetics of homopolymer chain collapse, which was induced by pairwise reversible bonds formation. We compared kinetic…
Biological molecules can form hydrogen bonds between nearby residues, leading to helical secondary structures. The associated reduction of configurational entropy leads to a temperature dependence of this effect: the "helix-coil…
Unstructured proteins can modulate cellular responses to environmental conditions by undergoing coil-globule transitions and phase separation. However, the molecular mechanisms of these phenomena still need to be fully understood. Here, we…
We study the conformational behavior of polarizable polymer chain under an external homogeneous electric field within the Flory type self-consistent field theory. We consider the influence of electric field on the polymer coil as well as on…
The coil-globule transition has been studied for A-B copolymer chains both by means of lattice Monte Carlo simulations using bond fluctuation algorithm and by a numerical self-consistent field method. Copolymer chains of fixed length with A…
In this paper we extend the Gaussian self-consistent method to permit study of the equilibrium and kinetics of conformational transitions for heteropolymers with any given primary sequence. The kinetic equations earlier derived by us are…
We analyze a model statistical description of the polypeptide chain helix-coil transition, where we take into account the specificity of its primary sequence, as quantified by the phase space volume ratio of the number of all accessible…
The coil-globule transition of an energy polydisperse chain, a model heteropolymer system where the number of monomer species is as large as the total number of monomers, is studied by means of computer simulations. In this study, we…
In view of the important role helix-sheet transitions play in protein aggregation, we introduce a simple model to study secondary structural transitions of helix-coil-sheet systems using a Potts model starting with an effective Hamiltonian.…
The problem of the helix-coil transition of biopolymers in explicit solvents, like water, with the ability for hydrogen bonding with solvent is addressed analytically using a suitably modified version of the Generalized Model of Polypeptide…
In this paper we summarize some results of our theoretical investigations of helix-coil transition both in single-strand (polypeptides) and two-strand (polynucleotides) macromolecules. The Hamiltonian does not contain any parameter designed…
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…
Molecular dynamics simulation methods are used to study the folding of polymer chains into packed cubic states. The polymer model, based on a chain of linked sites moving in the continuum, includes both excluded volume and torsional…
A simple phenomenological model for describing the conformational dynamics of biological macromolecules via the nonlinearity-induced instabilities is proposed. It is shown that the interaction between charges and bending degrees of freedom…