Invited Speaker
Julia Yeomans
Modeling the dynamics of knotted polymers
We show that a bead-spring polymer, coupled to a coarse grained solvent, is a useful tool to investigate the dynamics of knotted polymers. We investigate the motion of knots on polymers held under tension, discussing how the complexity of the knot affects the motion.
Results are also presented for the dynamics of confined, knotted polymers. We demonstrate that knots can control the rate at which a polymer passes through a constriction, and discuss the relevance of this behaviour to the ejection of viral DNA and to knot sorting using electrophoresis.