We study the conformations of a semiflexible chain, confined in nano-scaled spherical cavities, under two distinct processes of confinement. Radial contraction and packaging are employed as two confining procedures. The former method is performed by gradually decreasing the diameter of a spherical shell which envelopes a confined chain. The latter procedure is carried out by injecting the chain inside a spherical shell through a hole on the shell surface. The chain is modeled with a rigid body molecular dynamics simulation and its parameters are adjusted to DNA base-pair elasticity.
Movies:
- Movie #1 (Radial contraction of semiflexible chain with 1000 beads inside a sphere. The sphere is not shown in the movie)
- Movie #2 (Buckling of the ring structures near the sphere surface during radial contraction, transforms the structure from spool-like to tennis-ball)
- Movie #3 (Packaging of the semiflexible polymer with 1000 beads with 50 pN insertion force inside a sphere with 8nm radius)
- Movie #4 (Packaging of the semiflexible polymer with 1000 beads with 100 pN insertion force inside a sphere with 8nm radius)
- Movie #5 (Packaging of the semiflexible polymer with diameter of 2.5 nm by 50 pN insertion force inside a sphere with 8nm radius)