Related papers: Stretching short biopolymers by fields and forces
The shape of a polymer plays an important role in determining its interactions with other molecules and with the environment, and is in turn affected by both of them. As a consequence, in the literature the shape properties of a chain in…
The conformational properties of flexible and semiflexible polymers exposed to active noise are studied theoretically. The noise may originate from the interaction of the polymer with surround- ing active (Brownian) particles or from the…
We consider a polymer brush grafted to a surface (acting as an electrode) and bearing a charged group at its free end. Using a second distant electrode, the brush is subject to a constant electric field. Based on a coarse-grained continuum…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
We review the physical properties of macromolecular networks, consisting of semiflexible polymers such as actin. We start by giving a theoretical analysis of the conformational statistics and mechanical response of single filaments.…
We introduce a class of models of semiflexible polymers. The latter are characterized by a strong rigidity, the correlation length associated to the gradient-gradient correlations, called the persistence length, being of the same order as…
Loops undergoing thermal fluctuations are prevalent in nature. Ring-like or cross-linked polymers, cyclic macromolecules, and protein-mediated DNA loops all belong to this category. Stability of these molecules are generally described in…
Stretching dynamics of polymers in microfluidics is of particular interest for polymer scientists. As a charged polymer, a polyelectrolyte can be deformed from its coiled equilibrium configuration to an extended chain by applying uniform or…
We develop a scaling theory to describe dynamic fluctuations of a semiflexible polymer and find several distinct regimes. We performed simulations to characterize the longitudinal and transverse dynamics; using ensemble averaging for a…
Understanding fluctuation-induced breakages in polymers has important implications for basic and applied sciences. Here I present for the first time an analytical treatment of the thermal breakage problem of a semi-flexible polymer model…
The relaxation of initially straight semiflexible polymers has been discussed mainly with respect to the longest relaxation time. The biologically relevant non-equilibrium dynamics on shorter times is comparatively poorly understood, partly…
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…
The persistence length of semiflexible polymers and one-dimensional fluid membranes is obtained from the renormalization of their bending rigidity. The renormalized bending rigidity is calculated using an exact real-space functional…
Using molecular dynamic simulation, we study the stretching of an adsorbed homopolymer in a poor solvent with one end held at a distance $z_e$ from the substrate. We measure the vertical force $f$ on the end of the chain as a function of…
We investigate the conformations of a semiflexible polymer confined to a square box. Results of Monte Carlo simulations show the existence of a shape transition when the persistence length of the polymer becomes comparable to the dimensions…
The properties of semiflexible polymers tethered by one end to an impenetrable wall and exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by mesoscale simulations. A polymer, confined in two dimensions, is described by a linear bead-spring…
We describe a simple meanfield variational approach to study a number of properties of intrinsically stiff chains which are appropriate models for a large class of biopolymers. We present the calculation of the distribution of end-to-end…
Biopolymer looping is a dynamic process that occurs ubiquitously in cells for gene regulation, protein folding, etc. In cellular environments, biopolymers are often subject to tensions which are either static, or temporally fluctuating far…
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…
We investigate the dynamics of a single semiflexible filament, under the action of a compressing force, using numerical simulations and scaling arguments. The force is applied along the end to end vector at one extremity of the filament,…