Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 33: Cytoskeletal Filaments II

BP 33.8: Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2018, 17:00–17:15, H 1028

Tensile elasticity of a hinged wormlike chain — •Panayotis Benetatos — Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea

It is known that local defects in the bending rigidity of double-stranded DNA, such as denaturation bubbles or singe-stranded nicks, significantly affect its configurational properties and elastic response. In this talk, we present an analytic calculation (within the weak bending approximation) of the force-extension relation of a wormlike chain with a fixed hinge defect. We show that the gain in configurational entropy allowed by the defect has a significant effect on the stretching compliance of the polymer. Our results apply to any pair of semiflexible segments connected by a hinge. As such, they may also be relevant to cytoskeletal filaments (F-actin, microtubules), where one may treat the cross-link connecting two filaments as a hinge defect.

P. Benetatos, Phys. Rev. E 96, 042502 (2017)