Related papers: Entropic alignment of topologically modified ring …
It has been shown that under high cylindrical confinement, two ring polymers with excluded volume interactions between monomers, segregate to two halves of the cylinder to maximize their entropy. In contrast, two ring polymers remain mixed…
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…
In Escherichia coli (E. coli), entropic repulsion between the two daughter DNA ring polymers under cylindrical confinement is believed to be an important factor governing chromosomal segregation. The repulsion can be enhanced by topological…
Chromatin looping is a major epigenetic regulatory mechanism in higher eukaryotes. Besides its role in transcriptional regulation, chromatin loops have been proposed to play a pivotal role in the segregation of entire chromosomes. The…
During the life cycle of bacterial cells the non-mixing of the two ring-shaped daughter genomes is an important prerequisite for the cell division process. Mimicking the environments inside highly crowded biological cells, we study the…
The wrapping equilibria of one and two adsorbing cylinders are studied along a semi-flexible filament (polymer) due to the interplay between elastic rigidity and short-range adhesive energy between the cylinder and the filament. We show…
We study the emerging self-organization in active ring suspensions, focusing on how the rings' orientational order and geometric entanglement vary with density and spatial confinement. To quantify entanglement, we introduce the wrapping…
Ring polymers are prevalent in natural and engineered systems, including circular bacterial DNA, crown ethers for cation chelation, and mechanical nanoswitches. The morphology and dynamics of ring polymers are governed by the chemistry and…
The classic model of eukaryotic gene expression requires direct spatial contact between a distal enhancer and a proximal promoter. Recent Chromosome Conformation Capture (3C) studies show that enhancers and promoters are embedded in a…
Confinement is a versatile and well-established tool to study the properties of polymers either to understand biological processes or to develop new nano-biomaterials. We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer ring in weak…
Motivated by chromosomes enclosed in nucleus and the recently discovered active topological glass, we study a spherically confined melt of long nonconcatenated active polymer rings. Without activity, the rings exhibit the same average…
The static and dynamic properties of ring polymers in concentrated solutions remains one of the last deep unsolved questions in Polymer Physics. At the same time, the nature of the glass transition in polymeric systems is also not well…
Recent experiments have been able to visualise chromosome organization in fast-growing E.coli cells. However, the mechanism underlying the spatio-temporal organization remains poorly understood. We propose that the DNA adopts a specific…
Using molecular dynamics simulation, we investigate the effect of confinement on a system that comprises several stiff segmented polymer chains where each chain has similar segments, but length and stiffness of the segments vary among the…
The number of configurations of a polymer is reduced in the presence of a barrier or an obstacle. The resulting loss of entropy adds a repulsive component to other forces generated by interaction potentials. When the obstructions are scale…
We study structural properties of a ring polymeric melt confined in a film in comparison to a linear counterpart using molecular dynamics simulations. Local structure orderings of ring and linear polymers in the vicinity of the surface are…
Elucidating the physics of a concentrated suspension of ring polymers, or of an ensemble of ring polymers in a complex environment, is an important outstanding question in polymer physics. Many of the characteristic features of these…
We investigate experimentally the distribution of configurations of a ring with an elementary topological constraint, a ``figure-8'' twist. Using vibrated granular chains, which permit controlled preparation and direct observation of such a…
Some recent results on the rotational dynamics of polymers are reviewed and extended. We focus here on the relaxation of a polymer, either flexible or semiflexible, initially wrapped around a rigid rod. We also study the steady polymer…
We report molecular dynamics simulations of a system of repulsive, polymer-tethered colloidal particles. We use an explicit polymer model to explore how the length and the behavior of the polymer (ideal or self-avoiding) affect the ability…