Biopolymer elasticity: Mechanics and thermal fluctuations

Sinha, Supurna; Samuel, J.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/2289/4546

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DC Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Sinha, Supurna	-
dc.contributor.author	Samuel, J.	-
dc.date.accessioned	2012-05-28T10:41:32Z	-
dc.date.available	2012-05-28T10:41:32Z	-
dc.date.issued	2012-04	-
dc.identifier.citation	Physical Review E, 2012, Vol.85, p041802	en
dc.identifier.issn	1539-3755	-
dc.identifier.issn	1550-2376 (Online)	-
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/4546	-
dc.description	Open Access	en
dc.description.abstract	We present an analytical study of the role of thermal fluctuations in shaping molecular elastic properties of semiflexible polymers. Our study interpolates between mechanics and statistical mechanics in a controlled way and shows how thermal fluctuations modify the elastic properties of biopolymers. We present a study of the minimum-energy configurations with explicit expressions for their energy and writhe and plots of the extension versus link for these configurations and a study of fluctuations around the local minima of energy and approximate analytical formulas for the free energy of stretched twisted polymers. The central result of our study is a closed-form expression for the leading thermal fluctuation correction to the free energy around the nonperturbative writhing family solution for the configuration of a biopolymer. From the derived formulas, the predictions of the wormlike chain model for molecular elasticity can be worked out for a comparison against numerical simulations and experiments.	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	American Physical Society	en
dc.relation.uri	http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.041802	en
dc.relation.uri	http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012PhRvE..85d1802S	en
dc.rights	2012 The American Physical Society	en
dc.title	Biopolymer elasticity: Mechanics and thermal fluctuations	en
dc.type	Article	en
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (TP)

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