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Published on: June 28, 2014
Bending affects entropy of semiflexible polymers: Application to protein-DNA complexes
Shay M Rappaport1, Yitzhak Rabin
1Department of Physics and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
Abstract:
We discuss a class of generalized wormlike chain models of polymers with spontaneous curvature and show that the density of states and consequently the entropy of such natively bent polymers are higher than that of straight ones. This effect changes the classical Langmuir binding isotherm by giving rise to enhanced binding of DNA-bending proteins.
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