Manoel Manghi

Propulsion with a rotating elastic nanorod.

The dynamics of a rotating elastic filament is investigated using Stokesian simulations. The filament, straight and tilted with respect to its rotation axis for small driving torques, undergoes at a critical torque a strongly discontinuous shape bifurcation to a helical state. It induces a substantial forward propulsion whatever the sense of rotation: a nanomechanical force-rectification device is established.

Variational theory for a single polyelectrolyte chain revisited

Abstract.We reconsider the electrostatic contribution to the persistence length,

Inwardly curved polymer brushes: concave is not like convex

ell_{rm e}

Thermal denaturation of fluctuating DNA driven by bending entropy.

, of a single, infinitely long-charged polymer in the presence of screening. A Gaussian variational method is employed, taking

Ionic transport through sub-10 nm diameter hydrophobic high-aspect ratio nanopores: experiment, theory and simulation

ell_{rm e}

Microscopic Mechanism for Experimentally Observed Anomalous Elasticity of DNA in Two Dimensions

as the only variational parameter. For weakly charged and flexible chains, crumpling occurs at small length scales because conformational fluctuations overcome electrostatic repulsion. The electrostatic persistence length depends on the square of the screening length,

Mesoscopic models for DNA stretching under force: New results and comparison with experiments

ell_{rm e}simkappa^{-2}

Statistical Mechanics and Dynamics of Two Supported Stacked Lipid Bilayers

, as first argued by Khokhlov and Khachaturian by applying the Odijk-Skolnick-Fixman (OSF) theory to a string of crumpled blobs. We compare our approach to previous theoretical works (including variational formulations) and show that the result

A Rationale for Mesoscopic Domain Formation in Biomembranes

ell_{rm e}simkappa^{-1}

Nanodomains in Biomembranes with Recycling

found by several authors comes from the improper use of a cutoff at small length scales. For highly charged and stiff chains, crumpling does not occur; here we recover the OSF result and validate the perturbative calculation for slightly bent rods.