BIOPOLYMER CONFORMATIONS AS RANDOM WALKS ON THE EUCLIDEAN GROUP

The function of biopolymers depends to a large part on their shape statistics, on length scales ranging from one to thousands of monomers. I present a continuous model in which the equilibrium ensemble of macromolecular conformations is generated by a random walk with values in the Euclidean group. It includes local bending, twisting, stretching and shearing modes. The model exhibits helical structure on an intermediate length scale, while in the limit of long chains, the well-known worm-like chain behavior is recovered.