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Published on: March 13, 2019
Fractal globules: a new approach to artificial molecular machines
Vladik A Avetisov1, Viktor A Ivanov2, Dmitry A Meshkov3
1N. N. Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Department of Applied Mathematics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.
Abstract:
The over-damped relaxation of elastic networks constructed by contact maps of hierarchically folded fractal (crumpled) polymer globules was investigated in detail. It was found that the relaxation dynamics of an anisotropic fractal globule is very similar to the behavior of biological molecular machines like motor proteins. When it is perturbed, the system quickly relaxes to a low-dimensional manifold, M, with a large basin of attraction and then slowly approaches equilibrium, not escaping M. Taking these properties into account, it is suggested that fractal globules, even those made by synthetic polymers, are artificial molecular machines that can transform perturbations into directed quasimechanical motion along a defined path.
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