Pulling a polymer out of a potential well and the mechanical unzipping of DNA
arXiv:cond-mat/0004384 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.62.1128
Abstract
Motivated by the experiments on DNA under torsion, we consider the problem of pulling a polymer out of a potential well by a force applied to one of its ends. If the force is less than a critical value, then the process is activated and has an activation energy proportinal to the length of the chain. Above this critical value, the process is barrierless and will occur spontaneously. We use the Rouse model for the description of the dynamics of the peeling out and study the average behaviour of the chain, by replacing the random noise by its mean. The resultant mean-field equation is a nonlinear diffusion equation and hence rather difficult to analyze. We use physical arguments to convert this in to a moving boundary value problem, which can then be solved exactly. The result is that the time required to pull out a polymer of segments scales like . For models other than the Rouse, we argue that
11 pages, 6 figures. To appear in PhysicalReview E
References in corpus (1)
Cited by in corpus (41)
- Anomalous Dynamics of Translocation
- Force and kinetic barriers in unzipping of DNA
- DNA unzipped under a constant force exhibits multiple metastable intermediates
- Single Molecule Statistics and the Polynucleotide Unzipping Transition
- Dynamical scaling of the DNA unzipping transition
- Phase diagram of force-induced DNA unzipping in exactly solvable models
- Complete Phase Diagram of DNA Unzipping: Eye, Y-fork and triple point
- Mechanical denaturation of DNA: existence of a low temperature denaturation
- Effects of Eye-phase in DNA unzipping
- Force induced conformational transition in a system of interacting stiff polymer: Application to unfolding
- Force induced triple point for interacting polymers
- Pause Point Spectra in DNA Constant-Force Unzipping
- Polymer Detachment Kinetics from Adsorbing Surface: Theory, Simulation and Similarity to Infiltration into Porous Medium
- Unzipping Dynamics of Long DNAs
- Randomly forced DNA
- Inferring DNA sequences from mechanical unzipping data: the large-bandwidth case
- Dynamical phase transition of a periodically driven DNA
- Unzipping of DNA with correlated base-sequence
- Helicase on DNA: A Phase coexistence based mechanism
- Unzipping DNA by force: thermodynamics and finite size behaviour
- Helicase activity on DNA as a propagating front
- Unzipping DNA by a periodic force: Hysteresis loop area and its scaling
- Anomalous zipping dynamics and forced polymer translocation
- DNA sequence from the unzipping force? : one mutation problem
- Manipulating a single adsorbed DNA for a critical endpoint
- Can a double stranded DNA be unzipped by pulling a single strand?: Phases of adsorbed DNA
- Thermodynamic relations for DNA phase transitions
- Free energy landscape and characteristic forces for the initiation of DNA unzipping
- Looping dynamics of flexible chain with internal friction at different degree of compactness
- Unzipping DNA by a periodic force: Hysteresis loops, Dynamical order parameter, Correlations and Equilibrium curves
- Unzipping an adsorbed polymer in a dirty or random environment
- Effect of genome sequence on the force-induced unzipping of a DNA molecule
- Unzipping of two random heteropolymers: Ground state energy and finite size effects
- Can re-entrance be observed in force induced transitions?
- Unzipping of a double-stranded block copolymer DNA by a periodic force
- Dynamics of pulled desorption with effects of excluded volume interaction: The p-Laplacian diffusion equation and its exact solution
- Mapping between the order of thermal denaturation and the shape of the critical line of mechanical unzipping in 1-dimensional DNA models
- Hysteresis loop area scaling exponents in DNA unzipping by a periodic force: A Langevin dynamics simulation study
- Forest-Fire Model with Resistant Trees
- Force Induced Unzipping of DNA with Long Range Correlated Noise
- DNA Unzipping Transition