Force induced unfolding of bio-polymers in a cellular environment: A model study

Abstract

Effect of molecular crowding and confinement experienced by protein in the cell during unfolding has been studied by modeling a linear polymer chain on a percolation cluster. It is known that internal structure of the cell changes in time, however, they do not change significantly from their initial structure. In order to model this we introduce the correlation among the different disorder realizations. It was shown that the force-extension behavior for correlated disorder in both constant force ensemble (CFE) and constant distance ensemble (CDE) is significantly different than the one obtained in absence of molecular crowding.