TY  - JOUR
TI  - Cold and warm swelling of hydrophobic polymers
AV  - none
Y1  - 2001/02//
KW  - PACS: 36.20.-r
KW  -  05.20.-y
KW  -  05.50.+q
KW  -  87.10.+e

UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.63.031802
IS  - 3
JF  - Physical Review E
A1  - De Los Rios, Paolo
A1  - Caldarelli, Guido
PB  - American Physical Society
SN  - 1539-3755
N2  - We introduce a polymer model where the transition from swollen to compact configurations is due to interactions between the monomers and the solvent. These interactions are the origin of the effective attractive interactions between hydrophobic amino acids in proteins. We find that in the low and high temperature phases polymers are swollen, and there is an intermediate phase where the most favorable configurations are compact. We argue that such a model captures in a single framework both the cold and the warm denaturation experimentally detected for thermosensitive polymers and for proteins.
ID  - eprints1154
VL  - 63
ER  -