Kinetically driven helix formation during the homopolymer collapse process

Abstract

Using Langevin simulations, we find that simple 'generic' bead-and-spring homopolymer chains in a sufficiently bad solvent spontaneously develop helical order during the process of collapsing from an initially stretched conformation. The helix formation is initiated by the unstable modes of the straight chain, which drive the system towards a long-lived metastable transient state. The effect is most pronounced if hydrodynamic interactions are screened.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Polymer collapse in the presence of hydrodynamic interactions
• Unified perspective on proteins: A physics approach
• Formation of helical states in wormlike polymer chains
• Molecular dynamics simulation of polymer helix formation using rigid-link methods

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• Transient helix formation in semiflexible polymers without confinement effects
• Simulation of tethered oligomers in nanochannels using multi-particle collision dynamics
• Confusion-driven machine learning of structural phases of a flexible, magnetic Stockmayer polymer
• Spiral folding of a flexible chain of chiral active particles