Conformational landscape of long semiflexible linear and ring polymers near attractive surfaces

TL;DR

This study uses coarse-grained simulations to explore how polymer length, rigidity, crowder density, and topology influence the conformations of semiflexible polymers near attractive surfaces, revealing new insights into their behavior.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of how crowding and topology affect the conformational landscape of semiflexible polymers near attractive surfaces, extending previous short-polymer studies.

Findings

Polymer length determines the number of conformations.

High crowder density reduces effective bending rigidity.

Ring polymers show less conformational diversity than linear ones.

Abstract

Conformations of a crowded neutral semiflexible polymer under confinement near an attractive wall are studied via coarse-grained simulations. We study the effects of the interplay of the length of the polymer, bending rigidity, and the repulsive crowder density on such equilibrium semiflexible polymer conformations. The length of the polymer dictates the number of distinct conformations of the adsorbed semiflexible polymer, suggesting that previous studies of short polymers are limited. The crowder density is shown to effectively reduce the bending rigidity of the polymers and at the highest crowder density considered, a crumpled wall-adsorbed polymer conformation is seen regardless of the semiflexibility. In addition, we study the role of the topology of the semiflexible polymer by comparing the results of linear semiflexible polymers with those of ring polymers. The conformational landscape of crowded ring polymers shows less diversity than that of a linear polymer and crowders are seen to affect the ring polymers differently than their linear counterparts.