Exact statistics of helical wormlike chains with twist-bend coupling
Phys. Rev. E 112, 044403 – Published 14 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/88jw-svqj
Abstract
We present a solution for the Green's function for the general case of a helical wormlike chain with twist-bend coupling and demonstrate the applicability of our solution for evaluating general structural and mechanical chain properties. We find that twist-bend coupling renormalizes the persistence length and the force-extension curves relative to wormlike chains. Analysis of intrinsically twisted polymers shows that incorporation of twist-bend coupling results in the oscillatory behavior in principal tangent correlations that are observed in some studies of synthetic polymers. The exact nature of our solution provides a framework to evaluate the role of twist-bend coupling on polymer properties, such as DNA bound to histones and motivates the reinterpretation of existing biopolymer experimental data.
