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Updated: Mar 12, 2026

Nanomanipulation of Single RNA Molecules by Optical Tweezers
Published on: August 20, 2014
Non-exponential kinetics of unfolding under a constant force
Samuel Bell1, Eugene M Terentjev1
1Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
We examine the population dynamics of naturally folded globular polymers, with a super-hydrophobic "core" inserted at a prescribed point in the polymer chain, unfolding under an application of external force, as in AFM force-clamp spectroscopy. This acts as a crude model for a large class of folded biomolecules with hydrophobic or hydrogen-bonded cores. We find that the introduction of super-hydrophobic units leads to a stochastic variation in the unfolding rate, even when the positions of the added monomers are fixed. This leads to the average non-exponential population dynamics, which is consistent with a variety of experimental data and does not require any intrinsic quenched disorder that was traditionally thought to be at the origin of non-exponential relaxation laws.
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