Related papers: Self-Assembly of Crowded Semiflexible Polymers und…
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 constraints imposed by nano- and microscale confinement on the conformational degrees of freedom of thermally fluctuating biopolymers are utilized in contemporary nano-devices to specifically elongate and manipulate single chains. A…
Polymer fibers consist of macromolecules oriented along the fiber axis. Better alignment of chains leads to an increased strength of the fiber. It is believed that the key factor preventing formation of a perfectly oriented fiber is…
The self-assembly of block copolymers containing rigid blocks have received abiding attention due to its rich phase behavior and potential for use in a variety of applications. In this work, under asymmetric interactions between rod/coil…
The elasticity of disordered and polydisperse polymer networks is a fundamental problem of soft matter physics that is still open. Here, we self-assemble polymer networks via simulations of a mixture of bivalent and tri- or tetravalent…
Colloidal molecules are designed to mimic their molecular analogues through their anisotropic shape and interactions. However, current experimental realizations are missing the structural flexibility present in real molecules thereby…
Many-body interactions in systems of active matter can cause particles to move collectively and self-organize into dynamic structures with long-range order. In cells, the self-assembly of cytoskeletal filaments is critical for cellular…
We present a braided circuit topology framework for investigating topology and structural phase transitions in aggregates of semiflexible polymers. In the conventional approach to circuit topology, which specifically applies to single…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…
The field of synthetic active matter has, thus far, been led by efforts to create point-like, isolated (yet interacting) self-propelled objects (\emph{e.g.} colloids, droplets, microrobots) and understanding their collective dynamics. The…
A collection of thin structures buckle, bend, and bump into each-other when confined. This contact can lead to the formation of patterns: hair will self-organize in curls; DNA strands will layer into cell nuclei; paper, when crumpled, will…
Capsids of many viruses assemble around nucleic acids or other polymers. Understanding how the properties of the packaged polymer affect the assembly process could promote biomedical efforts to prevent viral assembly or nanomaterials…
Monte Carlo computer simulations are used to study the segregation behaviour of two polymers under cylindrical confinement. Using a multiple-histogram method, the conformational free energy, F, of the polymers was measured as a function of…
We consider a model of an extensible semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a motility assay of motor proteins represented explicitly as active harmonic linkers. Their heads bind stochastically to polymer segments within a…
Proteins can combine into functional elements in living cells or self-assemble into unwanted structures in a number of diseases. The resulting aggregates often display filamentous morphologies across a large range of protein shapes and…
We study the athermal mechanical response of deformable ring assemblies to quasistatic compression. Beyond jamming, further densification induces buckling of rings, resulting in macroscopic mechanical softening. Under cyclic compression,…
Soft matters whose constituents are deformable are ubiquitous in nature especially in biological systems-including cells and their organelles-as well as in foams and emulsions. The capacity for deformation in these soft materials gives rise…
We study the influence of chain stiffness on droplet flow in a nano-channel, coated with semiflexible hydrophobic polymers by means of non-equilibrium molecular-dynamics simulations. The studied system is then a moving droplet in the slit…
Experiments using nanofluidic devices have proven effective in characterizing the physical properties of polymers confined to small cavities. Two recent studies using such methods examined the organization and dynamics of two DNA molecules…
Brownian motion and viscoelasticity of semiflexible polymers is a subject that has been studied for many years. Still, rigorous analysis has been hindered due to the difficulty in handling the constraint that polymer chains cannot be…