Induction of entropic segregation: the first step is the hardest

In confinement, overlapping polymers experience entropic segregating forces that tend to demix them. This plays a role during cell replication, where it facilitates the segregation of daughter chromosomes. It has been argued that these forces are strong enough to explain chromosome segregation in el...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Soft matter 2014-08, Vol.10 (31), p.5836-5841
Main Authors: Minina, Elena, Arnold, Axel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Bacteria
Chains
Chromosome Segregation - genetics
Chromosomes
Chromosomes, Bacterial - genetics
Computer Simulation
Delay
Elongation
Entropy
Escherichia coli - genetics
Models, Genetic
Models, Molecular
Molecular Conformation
Polymers
Polymers - chemistry
Replication
Segregations
Time Factors
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Summary:In confinement, overlapping polymers experience entropic segregating forces that tend to demix them. This plays a role during cell replication, where it facilitates the segregation of daughter chromosomes. It has been argued that these forces are strong enough to explain chromosome segregation in elongated bacteria such as E. coli without the need for additional active mechanisms [S. Jun and B. Mulder, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 2006, 103, 12388]. However, entropic segregation can only set in after the initial symmetry has been broken. We demonstrate that the timescale for this induction phase is exponentially growing in the chain length, while the actual segregation time scales only quadratically in the chain length. Thus the induction quickly becomes the dominating, slow process, and makes entropic segregation much less efficient than previously thought. The slow induction might also explain the long delay in chromosome segregation observed in experiments on E. coli.
ISSN:1744-683X
1744-6848
DOI:10.1039/c4sm00286e