Wrapping Transition and Wrapping-Mediated Interactions for Discrete Binding along an Elastic Filament: An Exact Solution

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact statistical mechanics solution for the wrapping transition and interactions of cylinders on a semi-flexible filament, accounting for thermal fluctuations beyond Gaussian approximations.

Contribution

It introduces an exact path integral formalism to analyze wrapping equilibria and interactions on semi-flexible polymers, including entropic effects from wrapping.

Findings

Exact free energy of wrapping-unwrapping transition

Effective interaction between wrapped cylinders due to thermal fluctuations

Identification of entropy change as a source of interactions

Abstract

The wrapping equilibria of one and two adsorbing cylinders are studied along a semi-flexible filament (polymer) due to the interplay between elastic rigidity and short-range adhesive energy between the cylinder and the filament. We show that statistical mechanics of the system can be solved exactly using a path integral formalism which gives access to the full effect of thermal fluctuations, going thus beyond the usual Gaussian approximations which take into account only the contributions from the minimal energy configuration and small fluctuations about this minimal energy solution. We obtain the free energy of the wrapping-unwrapping transition of the filament around the cylinders as well as the effective interaction between two wrapped cylinders due to thermal fluctuations of the elastic filament. A change of entropy due to wrapping of the filament around the adsorbing cylinders as they move closer together is identified as an additional source of interactions between them. Such entropic wrapping effects should be distinguished from the usual entropic configuration effects in semi-flexible polymers. Our results may be applicable to the problem of adsorption of proteins as well as synthetic nano-particles on semi-flexible polymers such as DNA.