Related papers: Stretching short biopolymers by fields and forces
The structural properties of a linear polymer and its evolution in time have a strong bearing on its anisotropic stress response. The mean-square bond length and mean bond angle are the critical parameters that influence the time-varying…
We study the influence of some quenched disorder in the sequence of monomers on the entropic elasticity of long polymeric chains. Starting from the Kratky-Porod model, we show numerically that some randomness in the favoured angles between…
We present an analytical theory for heteropolymer deformation, as exemplified experimentally by stretching of single protein molecules. Using a mean-field replica theory, we determine phase diagrams for stress-induced unfolding of typical…
We prove an almost sure CLT for spatial extension of stretched (meaning subject to a non-zero pulling force) polymers at very weak disorder in all dimensions d+1 larger than or equal to 4.
By quantitative studies of statistics of polymer stretching in a random flow and of a flow field we demonstrate that the stretching of polymer molecules in a 3D random flow occurs rather sharply via the coil-stretch transition at the value…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
The linear instability of a beam tensioned by its own weight is considered. It is shown that for long beams, in the sense of an adequate dimensionless parameter, the characteristics of the instability caused by a follower force do not…
The dynamics of loop formation by linear polymer chains has been a topic of several theoretical/experimental studies. Formation of loops and their opening are key processes in many important biological processes. Loop formation in flexible…
Although the stretching of polymers and biomolecules is important in numerous settings, their response when confined to two-dimensions is relatively poorly-studied. In this paper, we derive closed-form analytical expressions for the…
Conformations of a crowded neutral semiflexible polymer under confinement near an attractive wall are studied via coarse-grained simulations. We study the effects of the interplay of the length of the polymer, bending rigidity, and the…
We develop a strong stretching approximation for a polymer brush made of self-avoiding polymer chains. The density profile of the brush and the distribution of the end monomer positions in stretching direction are computed and compared with…
We compute the distribution of the work done in stretching a Gaussian polymer, made of N monomers, at a finite rate. For a one-dimensional polymer undergoing Rouse dynamics, the work distribution is a Gaussian and we explicitly compute the…
The stretchability of polymeric materials is critical to many applications such as stretchable electronics and soft robotics, yet the stretchability of conventional cross-linked linear polymers is limited by the entanglements between…
We study the dynamics and conformations of a single active semiflexible polymer whose monomers experience a propulsion force perpendicular to the local tangent, with the end beads being different from the inner beads ("end-tailored"). Using…
We calculate the distribution function of the end--to--end distance of a semiflexible polymer with large bending rigidity. This quantity is directly observable in experiments on single semiflexible polymers (e.g., DNA, actin) and relevant…
When injected through a contraction, high molecular weight polymer solutions exhibit a sharp increase of apparent viscosity which originates from stretching polymer chains above a critical extension rate. This chain stretching can also…
We study the conformations of polymer chains in a poor solvent, with and without bending rigidity, by means of a simple statistical mechanics model. This model can be exactly solved for chains of length up to N=55 using exact enumeration…
Polymer brushes are increasingly used to tailor surface physicochemistry for various applications such as wetting, adhesion of biological objects, implantable devices, etc. We perform Dissipative Particle Dynamics simulations to study the…
Using a mapping of compact polymers on the Manhattan lattice to spanning trees, we calculate exactly the average number of bends at infinite temperature. We then find, in a high temperature approximation, the energy of the system as a…
We study the motion of long polymers (eg DNA) in a gel under the influence of an external force acting locally on small segments of the polymer. In particular, we examine the dependence of the drift velocity on the position where the force…