Dynamics of the Coil-Globule Transition

Whatever transition you explore, it is not just the initial and the final states that you are interested in, but the actual process of the transition. You are not only concerned with water, steam, and so on, but also with boiling, vaporization, and condensation nor only with ice, but also with melting and solidification. We know that the kinetics scenarios of phase transitions are quite diverse and vary quite wildly depending on the circumstances. For instance, water is water and vapor is vapor, but the transformation of water into vapor may be a slow hardly noticeable process (as, e.g., a wet road after a rain) or it may be a violent explosion (as, e.g., in an overheated steam boiler) boiling may be by formation of bubbles throughout the volume of water, or it may proceed only from the surface — and so on. 

What can we find out about globulisation How does it proceed How do polymer networks coUapse How does coil-globule transition develops in biopolymers, such as DNA and proteins It turns out that the scenarios are about as diverse as in the case of water and vapor — or more diverse. We will discuss later some other cases, but here we would like to concentrate on one particular possibility for a single chain collapse which we like because we think it is beautiful. 

But theorists think that this may not yet be the equilibrium globule, because its chain has not yet become entangled. To form the entanglements. 

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