A Simple Analytical Model for Predicting the Collapsed State of Self-Attractive Semiflexible Polymers.

ABSTRACT: We develop an analytical model to predict the collapse conformation for a single semiflexible polymer chain in solution, given its length, diameter, stiffness, and self-attractiveness. We construct conformational phase diagrams containing three collapsed states, namely torus, bundle, and globule over a range of dimensionless ratios of the three energy parameters, namely solvent-water surface energy ( γ s ), energy of bundle end folds ( γ e ), and bending energy per unit length in a torus ( γ b ). Our phase diagram captures the general phase behavior of a single long chain (>10 Kuhn lengths) at moderately high (order unity) dimensionless temperature, which is the ratio of thermal energy to the attractive interaction between neighboring monomers. We find that the phase behavior approaches an

SUBMITTER: Huang W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6432155 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature