Jun S, Arnold A, Ha BY. Confined space and effective interactions of multiple self-avoiding chains.
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 2007;
98:128303. [PMID:
17501165 DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.98.128303]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2006] [Indexed: 05/15/2023]
Abstract
We study the link between three seeming-disparate cases of self-avoiding polymers: strongly overlapping multiple chains in dilute solution, chains under spherical confinement, and the onset of semidilute solutions. Our main result is that the free energy for overlapping n chains is independent of chain length and scales as n9/4, slowly crossing over to n3, as n increases. For strongly confined polymers inside a spherical cavity, we show that rearranging the chains does not cost an additional free energy. Our results imply that, during cell cycle, global reorganization of eukaryotic chromosomes in a large cell nucleus could be readily achieved.
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