Metastable Tight Knots in Semiflexible Chains
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Doyle_Metastable tight.pdf
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Author(s)
Dai, Liang
Renner, Christopher Benjamin
Doyle, Patrick S
Date Issued
August 2014
Journal
Macromolecules
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Citation
Dai, Liang, C. Benjamin Renner, and Patrick S. Doyle. “Metastable Tight Knots in Semiflexible Chains.” Macromolecules 47, no. 17 (September 9, 2014): 6135–6140.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Knotted structures can spontaneously occur in polymers such as DNA and proteins, and the formation of knots affects biological functions, mechanical strength and rheological properties. In this work, we calculate the equilibrium size distribution of trefoil knots in linear DNA using off-lattice simulations. We observe metastable knots on DNA, as predicted by Grosberg and Rabin. Furthermore, we extend their theory to incorporate the finite width of chains and show an agreement between our simulations and the modified theory for real chains. Our results suggest localized knots spontaneously occur in long DNA and the contour length in the knot ranges from 600 to 1800 nm.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1021/ma501585x
