Phys.org November 29, 2022
DNA conformation is well understood for biological processes. An international team of researchers (Austria, Poland, Italy) focused on chains interlocking the rings and observed their behavior and how they could be used to design innovative materials. They showed that circular polycatenanes have physical and geometrical properties very similar to those of double stranded DNA rings. They demonstrated that the connection of local and global properties holds for these structures too, that is there is a connection between what occurs in a part of the structure and in its whole. The amount of twist of the polycatenanes and the degree of writhe, a measure of how much a curve entangles with itself, are closely connected to each other depending on the way in which the molecular chains are assembled. According to the researchers the findings can be exploited in future supramolecular structures… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Typical configurations for n=20,300 rings with ntw=0 (left column) and ntw=0.5n (right column)…Credit: Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 227801, 23 November 2022Â