Unfolding of polymers tethered to viscoelastic substrates.
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Publication Date
2019-09Journal Title
Soft matter
ISSN
1744-683X
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Volume
15
Issue
34
Pages
6885-6895
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Physical Medium
Print-Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Bell, S., & Terentjev, E. (2019). Unfolding of polymers tethered to viscoelastic substrates.. Soft matter, 15 (34), 6885-6895. https://doi.org/10.1039/c9sm01188a
Abstract
The problem of globular polymer unfolding under applied force is a widely-studied fundamental topic in biological and chemical physics, with important applications in cell biology. Much of the existing theoretical and
experimental literature focuses on the case where force is applied while fi xing the opposite end of polymer chain in space. However, in a realistic biological microenvironment, forces will be applied against viscoelastic
references, and the deformation of the folded polymer chain will be combined with the deformation of viscoelastic substrate. In this paper, we consider several simple viscoelastic models for the substrate, and show
that its relaxation properties determine the unfolding kinetics. In particular, for low pulling forces, substrates with longer relaxation times cause lower unfolding rates for the pulled polymer chain, whereas for high forces, those substrates with longer relaxation times instead produce higher unfolding rates.
Sponsorship
EPSRC (EP/M508007/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/c9sm01188a
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/295802
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