Circular and helical equilibrium solutions of inhomogeneous rods

Abstract

Real filaments are not perfectly homogeneous. Most of them have various materials composition and shapes making their stiffnesses not constant along the arclength. We investigate the existence of circular and helical equilibrium solutions of an intrinsically straight rod with varying bending and twisting stiffnesses, within the framework of the Kirchhoff model. The planar ring equilibrium solution only exists for a rod with a given form of variation of the bending stiffness. We show that the well known circular helix is not an equilibrium solution of the static Kirchhoff equations for a rod with non constant bending stiffness. Our results may provide an explanation for the variation of the curvature seen in small closed DNAs immersed in a solution containing Zn^{2+}, and in the DNA wrapped around a nucleosome.