Related papers: Polymer packaging and ejection in viral capsids: s…
Hydrodynamic forces may significantly affect the motion of polymers. In sheet-like cavities, such as the cell's cytoplasm and microfluidic channels, the hydrodynamic forces are long-range. It is therefore expected that that hydrodynamic…
How the geometry of nano-sized confinement affects dynamics of biomaterials is interesting yet poorly understood. An elucidation of structural details upon nano-sized confinement may benefit manufacturing pharmaceuticals in biomaterial…
We show that hard spheres confined between two parallel hard plates pack denser with periodic adaptive prismatic structures which are composed of alternating prisms of spheres. The internal structure of the prisms adapts to the slit height…
We investigate the tight packing of nematic polymers inside a confining hard sphere. We model the polymer {\sl via} the continuum Frank elastic free energy augmented by a simple density dependent part as well as by taking proper care of the…
The terminase motors of bacteriophages have been shown to be among the strongest active machines in the biomolecular world, being able to package several tens of kilobase pairs of viral genome into a capsid within minutes. Yet these motors…
Langevin dynamics simulations are performed to investigate ejection dynamics of spherically confined flexible polymers through a pore. By varying the chain length $N$ and the initial volume fraction $\phi_0$ of the monomers, two scaling…
We study the dynamics of an ideal polymer chain in a crowded, viscoelastic medium and in the presence of active forces. The motion of the centre of mass and of individual monomers is calculated. On time scales that are comparable to the…
We present using simple scaling arguments and one step replica symmetry breaking a theory for the localization of semiflexible polymers in a quenched random environment. In contrast to completely flexible polymers, localization of…
I use N-body simulations with two mass species of particles to demonstrate that disk galaxy simulations are subject to collisional relaxation at a higher rate than is widely assumed. Relaxation affects the vertical thickness of the disk…
The transport of deformable particles through porous media underlies a wealth of applications ranging from filtration to oil recovery to the transport and spreading of biological agents. Using direct numerical simulations, we analyze the…
Semi-flexible polymers in crowded environments exhibit complex dynamics that play a crucial role in various biological and material design processes. Based on the classic reptation theory, it is generally believed that semiflexible polymers…
We construct a tractable model to describe the rate at which a knotted polymer is ejected from a spherical capsid via a small pore. Knots are too large to fit through the pore and must reptate to the end of the polymer for ejection to…
We propose a method for the theoretical investigation of polymer translocation through composite pore structures possessing arbitrarily specified geometries. Translocation through each constituent part of the composite is treated as being…
Living organisms employ diverse strategies to navigate confined environments. Inspired by translocation observations on California blackworms (\textit{Lumbriculus variegatus}), we combine biological experiments and active-polymer…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
Solutions of semiflexible polymers confined by repulsive planar walls are studied by density functional theory and Molecular Dynamics simulations, to clarify the competition between the chain alignment favored by the wall and the depletion…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we examine the dynamics of a family of model polymers with varying chain length and torsional potential barriers. We focus on features of the dynamics of polymers that are seen experimentally but absent…
An effective medium approach together with a multiple scattering formalism is considered to study the steady-state dynamics of suspensions of spheres and rigid stiff polymer chains (Gaussian) without excluded volume interactions. The…
An important indicator of membrane performance are free volume elements (FVEs): microporous void spaces created by the inefficient packing of bulky groups along the polymer chain. FVEs tend to degrade over time as polymer chains reorganize…