Revisiting Blob Theory for DNA Diffusivity in Slitlike Confinement
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Dai-2013-Revisiting Blob Theory for DNA.pdf
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Author(s)
Dai, Liang
Tree, Douglas R.
van der Maarel, Johan R. C.
Dorfman, Kevin D.
Doyle, Patrick S
Date Issued
April 2013
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Dai, Liang, Douglas R. Tree, Johan R. C. van der Maarel, Kevin D. Dorfman, and Patrick S. Doyle. Revisiting Blob Theory for DNA Diffusivity in Slitlike Confinement. Physical Review Letters 110, no. 16 (April 2013). © 2013 American Physical Society.
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Final published version
Abstract
Blob theory has been widely applied to describe polymer conformations and dynamics in nanoconfinement. In slit confinement, blob theory predicts a scaling exponent of 2/3 for polymer diffusivity as a function of slit height, yet a large body of experimental studies using DNA produce a scaling exponent significantly less than 2/3. In this work, we develop a theory that predicts that this discrepancy occurs because the segment correlation function for a semiflexible chain such as DNA does not follow the Flory exponent for length scales smaller than the persistence length. We show that these short length scale effects contribute significantly to the scaling for the DNA diffusivity, but do not appreciably affect the scalings for static properties. Our theory is fully supported by Monte Carlo simulations, quantitative agreement with DNA experiments, and the results reconcile this outstanding problem for confined polymers.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Singapore-MIT Alliance in Research and Technology (SMART)
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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/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.168105
