ArticleScience advances2024
Activity-driven polymer knotting for macromolecular topology engineering.
Article in Science advances, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Coarse-Graining Reshapes Knot Dynamics in Polymers and Proteins.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2026Article
- 3D topologically polarized elastic metamaterials enable asymmetric energy isolation at finite frequencies.Science advances · 2026Article
- Actively Induced Supercoiling Can Slow Down Plasmid Solutions by Trapping the Threading Entanglements.ACS nano · 2026Article
- Behavior of Active Polymer Knots.Macromolecules · 2025Article
- Effects of Knotting on the Collapse of Active Ring Polymers.Macromolecules · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Macromolecules can gain special properties by adopting knotted conformations, but engineering knotted macromolecules is a challenging task. Here, we unexpectedly find that knots can be efficiently generated in active polymer systems. When one end of an actively reptative polymer is anchored, it undergoes continual self-knotting as a result of intermittent giant conformation fluctuations and the outward reptative motion. Once a knot is formed, it migrates to the anchoring point due to a nonequilibrium ratchet effect. Moreover, when the active polymer is grafted on a passive polymer, it can function as a self-propelling soft needle to either transfer its own knots or directly braid knots on the passive polymer. We further show that these active needles can create intermolecular bridging knots between two passive polymers. Our finding highlights the nonequilibrium effects in modifying the dynamic pathways of polymer systems, which have potential applications in macromolecular topology engineering.
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Registered trials
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