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Distribution of transverse chain fluctuations in harmonically confined semiflexible polymers

Sharma, Rati and Cherayil, Binny J (2012) Distribution of transverse chain fluctuations in harmonically confined semiflexible polymers. In: JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 136 (18).

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4712306

Abstract

Two different experimental studies of polymer dynamics based on single-molecule fluorescence imaging have recently found evidence of heterogeneities in the widths of the putative tubes that surround filaments of F-actin during their motion in concentrated solution. In one J. Glaser, D. Chakraborty, K. Kroy, I. Lauter, M. Degawa, N. Kirchesner, B. Hoffmann, R. Merkel, and M. Giesen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 037801 (2010)], the observations were explained in terms of the statistics of a worm-like chain confined to a potential determined self-consistently by a binary collision approximation, and in the other B. Wang, J. Guan, S. M. Anthony, S. C. Bae, K. S. Schweizer, and S. Granick, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 118301 (2010)], they were explained in terms of the scaling properties of a random fluid of thin rods. In this paper, we show, using an exact path integral calculation, that the distribution of the length-averaged transverse fluctuations of a harmonically confined weakly bendable rod (one possible realization of a semiflexible chain in a tube), is in good qualitative agreement with the experimental data, although it is qualitatively different in analytic structure from the earlier theoretical predictions. We also show that similar path integral techniques can be used to obtain an exact expression for the time correlation function of fluctuations in the tube cross section. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4712306]

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS
Publisher: AMER INST PHYSICS
Additional Information: Copyright for this article belongs to the American Institute of Physics
Department/Centre: Division of Chemical Sciences > Inorganic & Physical Chemistry
Date Deposited: 30 Jun 2012 07:51
Last Modified: 30 Jun 2012 07:52
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/44695

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