Shapes of semiflexible polymers in confined spaces

2007/11/30 by Y. Liu, Ya Liu, B. Chakraborty +1 · 2 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Cellular Mechanics and Interactions #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #astro-ph #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1478-3975/5/2/026004

published as Phys. Biol. 5 (2008) 026004 · 8 pages, 20 figures

arxiv created 2007/12/11 · openalex publication_date 2008/06/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Biological macromolecules, living in the confines of a cell, often adopt conformations that are unlikely to occur in free space. In this paper, we investigate the effects of confinement on the shape of a semiflexible chain. Results of Monte Carlo simulations show the existence of a shape transition when the persistence length of the polymer becomes comparable to the dimensions of the box. An order parameter is introduced to quantify this behavior. A simple model is constructed to study the effect of the shape transition on the effective persistence length of the polymer.

Citations

• The statistics and dynamics of confined or entangled stiff polymers

Cited by

• Buckling of stiff polymer rings in weak spherical confinement
• Anomalous structure and scaling of ring polymer brushes

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