Spontaneous helicity of a polymer with side loops confined to a cylinder

Chaudhuri, Debasish and Mulder, B M (2012) Spontaneous helicity of a polymer with side loops confined to a cylinder. Physical Review Letters, 108 (26). ISSN 0031-9007

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Abstract

Inspired by recent experiments on the spatial organization of bacterial chromosomes, we consider a type of "bottle-brush" polymer consisting of a flexible backbone chain, to which flexible side loops are connected. We show that such a model with an open linear backbone spontaneously adopts a helical structure with a well-defined pitch when confined to small cylindrical volume. This helicity persists over a range of sizes and aspect ratios of the cylinder, provided the packing fraction of the chain is suitably large. We analyze these results in terms of the interplay between the effective stiffness and actual intrachain packing effects caused by the side loops in response to the confinement.

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IITH Creators:

IITH Creators	ORCiD
Chaudhuri, Debasish	UNSPECIFIED

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

Bacterial chromosomes; Effective stiffness; Helical structures; Helicities; Packing effects; Packing fractions; Spatial organization; Aspect ratio; Bottles

Subjects:

Physics

Divisions:

Department of Physics

Depositing User:

Users 3 not found.

Date Deposited:

15 Oct 2014 09:20

Last Modified:

30 Aug 2017 11:00

URI:

http://raiithold.iith.ac.in/id/eprint/447