Abstract: The torsional elasticity of semiflexible polymers like DNA is of biological significance. A mathematical treatment of this problem was begun by Fuller using the relation between link, twist and writhe, but progress has been hindered by the non-local nature of the writhe. This stands in the way of an analytic statistical mechanical treatment, which takes into account thermal fluctuations, in computing the partition function. In this paper we use the well known analogy with the dynamics of tops to show that when subjected to stretch and twist, the polymer configurations which dominate the partition function admit a local writhe formulation in the spirit of Fuller and thus provide an underlying justification for the use of Fuller's "local writhe expression" which leads to considerable mathematical simplification in solving theoretical models of DNA and elucidating their predictions. Our result facilitates comparison of the theoretical models with single molecule micromanipulation experiments and computer simulations.
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Cited in
(15)- Toroidal DNA: topology, geometry and electrostatics
- Conformational analysis of stiff chiral polymers with end-constraints
- Biopolymer mechanics: stability, dynamics, and statistics
- Scaling of linking and writhing numbers for spherically confined and topologically equilibrated flexible polymers
- External field influence on semiflexible macromolecules: geometric coupling
- Writhe induced phase transition in unknotted self-avoiding polygons
- Thermal fluctuations of small rings of intrinsically helical DNA treated like an elastic rod
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- WRITHING AND LINKING DENSITIES FOR CLOSED, CIRCULAR DNA
- Single-molecule magnetic tweezer tests on DNA: bounds on topoisomerase relaxation
- Phase diagram of twist storing lattice polymers in variable solvent quality
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4116369 (Why is no real title available?)
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- Supercoiling of DNA plasmids: mechanics of the generalized ply
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