Journal
EUROPEAN BIOPHYSICS JOURNAL WITH BIOPHYSICS LETTERS
Volume 42, Issue 9, Pages 661-672Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00249-013-0915-z
Keywords
Biopolymers in solution; Salt dependence; Radius of gyration; Coarse grained simulations; Scaling exponents
Categories
Funding
- Centro de Investigacion en Polimeros (CIP, COMEX Group)
- CIP
- CONACYT [35813, 132056]
- PROMEP [47310286-912025]
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The salt dependent radius of gyration of a polyelectrolyte in aqueous solution is calculated in an environment where the polyelectrolyte is surrounded by a permeable membrane that exchanges only solvent particles with the bulk. We obtain additionally the scaling exponent of the gyration radius as a function of the polymerization degree, and find that the polyelectrolyte retains a stretched conformation during the condensation and re-expansion process, indicating that these effects are of an electrostatic nature. The solvent quality is also shown to affect the polyelectrolyte conformation, especially for the poor solvent case. These results are obtained using a hybridized Monte Carlo technique with the coarse-grained, dissipative particle dynamics method with fluctuating number of solvent particles. The full range of the electrostatic interactions is included in the simulations, using the Ewald sum method, and the counterions and solvent molecules are included explicitly. In the complex systems mentioned above, the electrostatic interactions and the solvent quality play a key role in understanding phenomena that do not occur in uncharged systems. Our results are compared and validated with the behavior of some biomolecules under similar environments.
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