Related papers: Solute Effects on the Helix-Coil Transition
Thermodynamics of helix-coil transitions in amino-acid homo-oligomers are studied by the recently proposed multicanonical algorithms. Homo-oligomers of length 10 are considered for three characteristic amino acids, alanine (helix former),…
We study the behavior of a flexible polymer chain in the presence of a low-molecular weight solvent in the vicinity of a liquid-gas critical point within the framework of a self-consistent field theory. The total free energy of the dilute…
We present results of molecular simulations of a model protein whose hydrophobic collapse proceeds as a cascade of downhill transitions between distinct intermediate states. Different intermediates are stabilized by means of appropriate…
The force laws governing the extension behavior of homopolypeptides are obtained from a phenomenological free energy capable of describing the helix-coil transition. Just above the melting temperature of the free chains, T*, the plot of…
Conformational properties of a single flexible polyelectrolyte chain in a poor solvent are studied using constant temperature molecular dynamics simulation. The effects of counterions are explicitly taken in to account. Structural…
We report results from multicanonical simulations of poly-alanine. Homopolymers of up to 30 amino acids were considered and various thermodynamic quantities as a function of temperature calculated. We study the nature of the observed…
Effect of small additive molecules on the structural relaxation of polymer melts is investigated via molecular dynamics simulations. At a constant external pressure and a fixed number concentration of added molecules, the variation of…
The closure of cooperative chains of Hydrogen Bonding, HB, to form cycles can enhance cooperativity. Cycles of charge transfer can balance charge into and out of every site, eliminating the charge build-up that limits the cooperativity of…
We present an off-lattice statistical model of a single polymer chain in mixed solvent media. Taking into account a polymer conformational entropy, renormalization of solvent composition near the polymer backbone, the universal…
Using Langevin simulations, we find that simple 'generic' bead-and-spring homopolymer chains in a sufficiently bad solvent spontaneously develop helical order during the process of collapsing from an initially stretched conformation. The…
We show that in anisotropic superconductors, falling at finite temperature into the 3D-XY- and at zero temperature into the 2D-XY-QSI universality class, the isotope effects on transition temperature, specific heat and magnetic penetration…
We study the effects of weak point and columnar 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…
Modelling electrolytes accurately on both a nanoscale and cell level can contribute to improving battery chemistries.[Armand and Tarascon, Nature, 2008, 451, 652-657] We previously presented a thermodynamic continuum model for…
We have discovered unusual behavior of polymer coils in a binary solvent (nitroethane+isooctane) near the critical temperature of demixing. The exceptionally close refractive indices of the solvent components make the critical opalescence…
We investigate volume phase transition in gels immersed in mixture solvents, on the basis of a three-component Flory-Rehner theory. When the selectivity of the minority solvent component to the polymer network is strong, the gel tends to…
A careful analysis of measurements of circular dichroism of poly(L-glutamic acid) (PGA) shows that the data can be very accurately described by introducing a third state for the PGA configuration, in addition to the helix and coil ones, and…
Quantum chemical calculations have been employed to investigate the solvation of lithium cations in ethylene carbonate/propylene carbonate and propylene carbonate/dimethyl carbonate mixed electrolytes. The impact of the presence of the…
Hydrophobic polyelectrolytes (HPE) can solubilize bilayer membranes, form micelles or can reversibly aggregate as a function of pH. The transitions are often remarkably sharp. We show that these cooperative transitions occur by a…
The effect of topology on the collapse transition and instantaneous shape of an energy polydisperse polymer (a model heteropolymer) is studied by means of computer simulations. In particular, we consider three different chain topology,…
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…