Controlling Secondary Structures of Bio-Polymers with Hydrogen-Like Bonding

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lattice model for bio-polymers where hydrogen-like bonding controls secondary structure formation, revealing how different interaction strengths influence phase behavior and orientational order.

Contribution

It presents a novel lattice model that demonstrates how hydrogen-like bonds can be tuned to control bio-polymer secondary structures and phase transitions.

Findings

Different hydrogen bond types lead to distinct low-temperature structures.

The phase diagram shows multiple phases with varying orientational order.

Transitions between phases are characterized and classified.

Abstract

We present results for a lattice model of bio-polymers where the type of $\beta$-sheet formation can be controlled by different types of hydrogen bonds depending on the relative orientation of close segments of the polymer. Tuning these different interaction strengths leads to low-temperature structures with different types of orientational order. We perform simulations of this model and so present the phase diagram, ascertaining the nature of the phases and the order of the transitions between these phases.