Anomalous Conformations and Dynamics of Active Block Copolymers

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to explore how active and passive segments in block copolymers influence their shape and movement, revealing unexpected swelling and complex diffusion behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a model for active-block copolymers and uncovers novel conformational and dynamic phenomena depending on block arrangements.

Findings

Active-block copolymers exhibit swelling larger than fully active polymers.

Full polymers show enhanced diffusion and Rouse-like scaling.

Passive and active blocks display anomalous super- and sub-diffusive dynamics.

Abstract

Heterogeneous distribution of passive and active domains in the chromosome plays a crucial role for its dynamic organization within the cell nucleus. Motivated by that here we investigate the steady-state conformation and dynamics of a model active-block copolymer using numerical simulations. Our results show that depending on the relative arrangements of the active and passive blocks, the polymer shows an unusual swelling, even larger than the corresponding fully active polymer. On the one hand, the dynamics of the full polymer show usual enhanced diffusion and Rouse-like scaling behavior. On the other hand, individual passive and active blocks show anomalous transient super- and sub-diffusive dynamics. We characterize this anomalous dynamics in terms of the dependence of a generalized diffusion constant with the polymer length and activity strength.