English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Depletion forces and macromolecular crowding govern the structure andfunction of biopolymers in biological cells and the properties of polymernanocomposite materials. To isolate and analyze the influence of polymer shapefluctuations and penetrability on depletion-induced interactions and crowdingby nanoparticles, we model polymers as effective penetrable ellipsoids, whoseshapes fluctuate according to the probability distributions of the eigenvaluesof the gyration tensor of an ideal random walk. Within this model, we applyMonte Carlo simulation methods to compute the depletion-induced potential ofmean force between hard nanospheres and crowding-induced shape distributions ofpolymers in the protein limit, in which polymer coils can be easily penetratedby smaller nanospheres. By comparing depletion potentials from simulations ofellipsoidal and spherical polymer models with predictions of polymer fieldtheory and free-volume theory, we show that polymer depletion-inducedinteractions and crowding depend sensitively on polymer shapes andpenetrability, with important implications for bulk thermodynamic phasebehavior.

Depletion-Induced Forces and Crowding in Polymer-Nanoparticle Mixtures: Role of Polymer Shape Fluctuations and Penetrability