Length distribution of stiff, self-assembled polymers at thermal equilibrium

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the length distribution of stiff, self-assembled polymers at thermal equilibrium, showing it generally follows an exponential distribution with implications for amyloid fibril observations.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical calculation of the length distribution of stiff polymers at equilibrium, highlighting deviations at short lengths and connecting to experimental amyloid fibril data.

Findings

Length distribution is mostly exponential.

Deviations occur at short lengths.

Implications for amyloid fibril length observations.

Abstract

We investigate the length distribution of self-assembled, long and stiff polymers at thermal equilibrium. Our analysis is based on calculating the partition functions of stiff polymers of variable lengths in the elastic regime. Our conclusion is that the length distribution of this self-assembled system follows closely the exponential distribution, except at the short length limit. We then discuss the implications of our results on the experimentally observed length distributions in amyloid fibrils.