How molecular knots can pass through each other

Abstract

We propose a mechanism in which two molecular knots pass through each other and swap positions along a polymer strand. Associated free energy barriers in our simulations only amount to a few $k_{B}T$, which may enable the interchange of knots on a single DNA strand.

6 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study of Nonconcatenated Ring Polymers in a Melt: I. Statics
• Knot-controlled ejection of a polymer from a virus capsid

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Chirality modifies the interaction between knots
• Epigenetic Transitions and Knotted Solitons in Stretched Chromatin
• Ring polymers in confined geometries
• Topological disentanglement of linear polymers under tension
• Decoding chirality in circuit topology of a self entangled chain through braiding
• Stabilization and Destabilization of Semiflexible Polymers Induced by Spherical Confinement