Related papers: Solute Effects on the Helix-Coil Transition
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 investigate local phase transitions of the solvent in the neighborhood of a solvophobic polymer chain which is induced by a change of the polymer-solvent repulsion and the solvent pressure in the bulk solution. We describe the polymer in…
The conformations of semiflexible (bio)polymers are studied in flow through geometrically structured microchannels. Using mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, we show that the polymer undergoes a rod-to-helix transition as it moves from the…
We elucidate the structural transitions in a helical off-lattice homopolymer induced by crowding agents, as function of the number of monomers ($N$) and volume fraction ($\phi_c$) of crowding particles. At $\phi_c = 0$, the homopolymer…
The similarity in the thermodynamic properties of two completely different theoretical models for the helix-coil transition is examined critically. The first model is an all-atomic representation for a poly-alanine chain, while the second…
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…
Helix-coil transition in polypeptides is an example of a spin model with a preferred spin direction, in the sense that a theoretical formulation of this problem requires to assign a preferred value of spin to the helical conformation in…
We calculate the ion and composition distributions around colloid particles in an aqueous mixture, accounting for preferential adsorption, electrostatic interaction, selective solvation among ions and polar molecules, and…
A polymer chain tethered to a surface may be compact or extended, adsorbed or desorbed, depending on interactions with the surface and the surrounding solvent. This leads to a rich phase diagram with a variety of transitions. To investigate…
Thermoreversible sol-gel transitions in solutions of rod-like associating polymers are analyzed by computer simulations and by mean field models. The sol-gel transition is determined by the divergence of the cluster weight average. The…
We explore the mechanical response of a single polyelectrolyte chain under tension in good and poor solvents using a combination of simulation and theory. In poor solvents, where the equilibrium state of the chain is a collapsed globule, we…
The folding of a polypeptide is an example of the cooperative effects of the amino-acid residues. Of recent interest is how a secondary structure, such as a helix, spontaneously forms during the collapse of a peptide from an initial…
We study the kinetics of helix-coil transition in water solutions of gelatin (collagen protein) by optical rotation techniques combined with thermal characterization. By examining the rates of secondary helix folding, and covering a very…
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…
Thermodiffusion in aqueous electrolyte solutions exhibits complex dependencies on temperature, concentration, and salt composition, yet its microscopic origins remain incompletely understood. Here, we employ non-equilibrium molecular…
We study the effects of weak columnar and point disorder on the vortex-lattice phase transitions in high temperature superconductors. The combined effect of thermal fluctuations and of quenched disorder is investigated using a simplified…
We review our recent studies on selective solvation effects in phase separation in polar binary mixtures with a small amount of solutes. Such hydrophilic or hydrophobic particles are preferentially attracted to one of the solvent…
Thermodynamical properties of the helix-coil transition were successfully described in the past by the model of Lifson, Poland and Sheraga. Here we compute the corresponding structure factor and show that it possesses a universal scaling…
Understanding the nature of chemical bonding in solids is crucial to comprehend the physical and chemical properties of a given compound. To explore changes in chemical bonding in lead chalcogenides (PbX, where X = Te, Se, S, O), a…
Dynamics of a polymer chain in solution gets significantly affected by the temperature and the frictional forces arising due to solvent viscosity. Here, using an explicit solvent framework for polymer simulation with the liberty to tune the…