title: Stretching short biopolymers by fields and forces.
abstract: We study the mechanical properties of semiflexible polymers when the contour length of the polymer is comparable to its persistence length. We compute the exact average end-to-end distance and shape of the polymer for different boundary conditions, and show that boundary effects can lead to significant deviations from the well-known long-polymer results. We also consider the case of stretching a uniformly charged biopolymer by an electric field, for which we compute the average extension and the average shape, which is shown to be trumpetlike. Our results also apply to long biopolymers when thermal fluctuations have been smoothed out by a large applied field or force.
authors.affiliation: Martin Fisher School of Physics, Brandeis University, Mailstop 057, Waltham, MA 02454-9110, USA. yhori@andover.edu
authors.forename: Yuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hori
authors.forename: Ashok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prasad
authors.forename: Jané
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kondev
mesh_terms: D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics / Q000379:methods; D001704:Biopolymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry; D004058:Diffusion; D004594:Electrophysiology; D019277:Entropy; D046911:Macromolecular Substances / Q000737:chemistry*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D016011:Normal Distribution; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D001704:Biopolymers; D046911:Macromolecular Substances; D011108:Polymers; D004247:DNA