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Conformational Polymer Statistics from the Geometrical Scaling of Monomeric Units and the Characteristic Ratio from Circle Maps. Application to Carbohydrate Macromolecules

✍ Scribed by Stefano A. Mezzasalma; Carmela Angioletti; Attilio Cesàro


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
2004
Tongue
English
Weight
219 KB
Volume
13
Category
Article
ISSN
1022-1344

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✦ Synopsis


Abstract

Summary: Basic results on conformational chain statistics were formerly derived from scaling concepts for geometry and a relativistic picture of Brownian self‐diffusion in liquids. A polymer conformation was interpreted as a geometrical scaling law of its monomer shape, where the concept of characteristic ratio identifies a mean metric coefficient, originating topologically from rotational degrees of freedom internal to single molecules. Here, we add the former theoretical results to first numerical calculations. They are performed for three polysaccharides, provided with different chain topologies and constrained conformationally to identical square‐well energy states with increasing width. The spatial coil dilation‐contraction has been described satisfactorily by dihedral sine‐like rotations on a circle at dimeric length scales. New intrinsic quantities, like inner characteristic ratio and angular Kuhn step, both belonging to the shape of single molecules, have been finally defined. The geometrical mechanism bringing them at larger scales, to point out the chain shape size, is still unknown and under consideration.

Conformational energy landscape of nigerose.

imageConformational energy landscape of nigerose.