Chennai Mathematical Institute

Seminars




Biopolymer Elasticity
Supurna Sinha
Raman Research Institute, Bangalore.
05-02-08


Abstract

In recent years, statistical mechanics of semiflexible polymers has emerged as an active area of research triggered by single molecule experiments on biopolymers. These experiments are designed to understand the role of elasticity of biopolymers at the cellular level. In this talk I will present some theoretical studies on aspects of bend and twist elasticity of semi-flexible polymers based on the Worm-Like-Chain (WLC) model. These studies combine techniques of statistical mechanics, differential geometry, and topology. The results of these studies shed light on recent single molecule experiments on biopolymers.