N.M. Toan, D. Marenduzzo and C. Micheletti
Inferring the diameter of a biopolymer from its stretching response
Biophysical Journal 89 80-86 (2005)
Link to online article.
ABSTRACT
We investigate the stretching response of a thick polymer
model by means of extensive stochastic simulations. The computational
results are synthesized in an analytic expression that characterizes
how the force versus elongation curve depends on the polymer
structural parameters: its thickness and granularity (spacing of the
monomers). The expression is used to analyze experimental data for the
stretching of various different types of biopolymers: polypeptides,
polysaccharides and nucleic acids. Besides recovering elastic
parameters (such as the persistence length) that are consistent with
those obtained from standard entropic models, the approach allows to
extract viable estimates for the polymers diameter and
granularity. This shows that the basic structural polymer features
have such a profound impact on the elastic behaviour that they can be
recovered with the sole input of stretching measurements.