Statistical Physics of Biopolymer Conformations
A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Physics and Theory".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 2961
Special Issue Editor
Interests: theory of conformational transitions in biopolymers
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Polymers are molecules comprised of many repeating subunits. This fact rationalizes the application of Statistical Mechanics to achieve the physical description at the level of a single macromolecule, which is already a statistical system on its own. The phase space of the problem is very rich thanks to the existence of many possible microstates for each subunit (monomer), leading to the statistical ensemble of polymer conformations. Torsional or dihedral angles which play the role of generalized coordinates, are hindered: the energy profile usually has several minima, referred to as isomeric states or isomers. The fact that most of the time monomers are found in one of few isomeric states, leads to the Rotational Isomeric State (RIS) approximation and discretization of coordinate values. This is the regular logic behind the spin model applications in Polymer Physics.
Although the above is true for both synthetic and natural polymers, when it comes to the polypeptides and polynucleotides, the publications are often more directed towards the biologically inspired interpretation of obtained theoretical results.
This Special Issue is intended for papers reporting important advances in statistical mechanical models and approaches, describing order-disorder (helix-coil, protein denaturation, DNA melting, etc.) transitions in biopolymers from the viewpoint of physics. Approaches related to the account of solvent-related effects are especially welcome.
Dr. Artem Badasyan
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Biopolymer
- polypeptide
- polynucleotide
- protein folding
- helix-coil transition
- DNA melting
- cold denaturation
- water-protein interactions
- Ising model
- Potts model
- Zimm-Bragg model
- Lifson-Roig model
- Wako-Saito-Munoz-Eaton model
